ICO: Knowing your rights is a priority in new strategy

There should be a high level of awareness in organisations of their obligations to protect customers' personal information, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said. It is the aim of the ICO to ensure that organisations are informed of "their wider obligations under information rights law with those obligations …

[Anonymous Coward]

Start at the beginning.

Perhaps the ICO could start with understanding what rights it is supposed to protect and actually start doing it.

BT, Phorm, TalkTAlk, Vodafone allegedly intercepting data, uninvited.

Interception of Internet browsing and replaying URL's - including URLs with additional string data added as personal identifiers

Scraping of copright content fo rcommercial gain without the pexpress permission of the owner.

Start doing that and they may - just may - start to get some credibility.

[Vic]

"their wider obligations under information rights law"

It should be the ICO's goal to ensure they pull their collective finger out of their arse and actually do something tangible to protect consumers.

Ooh! What's that pink thing, up in the sky? Curly tail, goes "oink"?

Vic.

[dephormation.org.uk]

Logs, eyes, etc.

<--- "ow ow there's a log in my eye"

"Individuals should have better awareness of their personal information rights, the ICO said."

That from the same organisation that said "The ICO are not technical experts". The ICO should have better awareness of the industry that it was established to regulate, before pointing the finger at the public, and daring to call them fools for being unaware of their rights.

The ICO are a pointless parasitic sham. They are lazy, incompetent, corrupt, and entirely ineffective.

It would be better if they were simply disbanded (so that there was no ambiguity about the data protection void that exists in the UK). But I guess "resign" is not the feedback civil servants want to hear.

[yeahyeahno]

Why does anything the ICO say matter at all?

When the ICO hands down fines of £1,000 to ACS:Law for its very serious breach, any UK business will find that ignoring the ICO and paying the very occasional fine will be by far the most profitable way to go. Which means any consumer advice issued by the ICO is totally pointless, I don't have any rights if the enforcement authority fails to enforce my rights.

[Anonymous Coward]

ICO - useless

But what happens when you know your rights?

I've had the misfortune to use the ICO. I raised a complaint about a company refusing to comply with a DPA request.

Result - a year later they said that - yes the company has broken the DPA rules and that they would "ask" the company to comply with the law but wouldn't make them comply.

The only way to get any satisfaction was to take the company to court - the ICO wasn't any use at all.

The ICO is a waste of time and space and if the collation is serious about cutting waste in government the ICO is a prime candidate.

[Ian 25]

Oh, I was going to say that

Looks like you all beat me to it.

The ICO is a waste of space for consumers and always has been. Legal threats on the other hand have yielded me a few hundred quid of "sorry presents" out of spammers over the years, usually after a short sharp chat to their legal departments / Directors or a succinct letter to their homes. I might go for cash in Small Claims court next time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Urm...

I was under the impression that we in the UK do not have any kind of rights...

[Buzzby]

The ICO is!

Seeme to me to be just some jobs for the boys. Nice little numbers for the great, good & ignorant. You expect me to do my job? Get real!!!