Facebook refuses to disclose “chuck Chequers” Brexit advertiser to UK parliament

Facebook has refused to provide the British parliament with the names of individuals behind a shadowy network backing an extreme ‘no deal’ Brexit outcome over a government-negotiated compromise. Since the June 2016 EU referendum vote, politics in the UK has been consumed by the question of how to implement a close vote to leave. And […]

View More Facebook refuses to disclose “chuck Chequers” Brexit advertiser to UK parliament

UK parliament calls for antitrust, data abuse probe of Facebook

A final report by a British parliamentary committee which spent months last year investigating online political disinformation makes very uncomfortable reading for Facebook — with the company singled out for “disingenuous” and “bad faith” responses to democratic concerns about the misuse of people’s data. In the report, published today, the committee has also called for […]

View More UK parliament calls for antitrust, data abuse probe of Facebook

Brexit backer’s insurance firm and leave campaign fined £120k by data watchdog

The UK’s data protection watchdog has issued fines against a pro-Brexit campaign, Leave.EU, and an insurance company owned by the largest individual donor to the leave cause, Arron Banks’ Eldon Insurance. The penalties have been handed down for what the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) dubs “serious breaches of electronic marketing laws” during the 2016 referendum on […]

View More Brexit backer’s insurance firm and leave campaign fined £120k by data watchdog

Cambridge Analytica’s parent pleads guilty to breaking UK data law

Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Elections, has been fined £15,000 in a UK court after pleading guilty to failing to comply with an enforcement notice issued by the national data protection watchdog, the Guardian reports. While the fine itself is a small and rather symbolic one, given the political data analytics firm went into administration last […]

View More Cambridge Analytica’s parent pleads guilty to breaking UK data law

Facebook appeals UK data watchdog’s £500k Cambridge Analytica fine

Facebook has said it will appeal against a £500,000 penalty issued by the UK’s data watchdog this summer following a lengthy investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal. Facebook told the regulator an estimated one million UK users were among the 87M of its users whose private data was harvested by Dr. Aleksandr Kogan and his company […]

View More Facebook appeals UK data watchdog’s £500k Cambridge Analytica fine

UK watchdog has eyes on Google-DeepMind’s health app hand-off

The shock news yesterday that Google is taking over a health app rolled out to UK hospitals over the past few years by its AI division, DeepMind, has caught the eye of the country’s data protection watchdog — which said today that it’s monitoring developments. An ICO spokesperson told us: “An ICO investigation and an […]

View More UK watchdog has eyes on Google-DeepMind’s health app hand-off

Campaign tool supplied to UK’s governing party by Trump-Pence app dev quietly taken out of service — thanks to GDPR

An app that the UK’s governing party launched last year — for Conservative Party activists to gamify, ‘socialize’ and co-ordinate their campaigning activity — has been quietly pulled from app stores. Its vanishing was flagged to us earlier today, by Twitter user Sarah Parks, who noticed that, when loaded, the Campaigner app now displays a message informing users […]

View More Campaign tool supplied to UK’s governing party by Trump-Pence app dev quietly taken out of service — thanks to GDPR

UK watchdog hands Facebook maximum $500K fine over Cambridge Analytica data breach

The U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has confirmed that it has hit Facebook with a maximum $500,000 ($645,000) fine around the way it mishandled user data following the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year. The ICO announced its intention to hand Facebook the fine back in July and it said today that it had not changed […]

View More UK watchdog hands Facebook maximum $500K fine over Cambridge Analytica data breach

France records big jump in privacy complaints since GDPR

Another European data protection agency has reported a sharp rise in the numbers of complaints since the EU updated its privacy framework four months ago, when GDPR came into force, updating regional data protection rules and introducing much higher penalties for privacy violations. France’s CNIL agency said today that it’s received 3,767 complaints since May 25, when GDPR […]

View More France records big jump in privacy complaints since GDPR

Equifax slapped with UK’s maximum penalty over 2017 data breach

Credit rating giant Equifax has been issued with the maximum possible penalty by the UK’s data protection agency for last year’s massive data breach. Albeit, the fine is only £500,000 because the loss of customer data occurred when the UK’s prior privacy regime was in force — rather than the tough new data protection law, […]

View More Equifax slapped with UK’s maximum penalty over 2017 data breach

UK data protection complaints more than double under new GDPR rules

The number of complaints filed with the UK data protection watchdog has more than doubled since the introduction of new European regulations. There were 6,281 complaints filed with the Information Commissioner’s Office between May 25 when the new GDPR rules went into effect and July 3, a rise of more than double from the 2,417 […]

View More UK data protection complaints more than double under new GDPR rules

What can we learn from the Dixons data breach that blew up after disclosure

European consumer electronics retailer Dixons Carphone’s apologetic admission yesterday that a 2017 data breach was in fact considerably worse than it first reported suggests disclosures of major breaches could get a bit more messy — at least under the early reign of the region’s tough new data protection framework, GDPR — as organizations scramble to comply with […]

View More What can we learn from the Dixons data breach that blew up after disclosure