Force takes £80,000 hit for mistakenly identifying victims of child abuse
Gloucestershire Police has been fined £80,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after sending a bulk email that identified victims of non-recent child abuse.
The ICO penalised the force in response to an incident in December 2016, when an officer sent an update on the case involving multiple allegations to 56 recipients by email but entered their email addresses in the ‘To’ field and did not activate the ‘BCC’ function.
As a results each recipient of the e-mail – including victims, witnesses, lawyers and journalists - could see the full names and e-mail addresses of all the others. The message also made reference to schools and other organisations being investigated in relation to the abuse allegations.
Of the 56 emails sent, all but one was considered deliverable. Three were confirmed to have been successfully recalled once the force identified the breach two days later, so 56 names and email addresses were visible to up to 52 recipients.
Serious breach
ICO head of enforcement Steve Eckersley said: “This was a serious breach of the data protection laws and one which was likely to cause substantial distress to vulnerable victims of abuse, many of whom were also legally entitled to lifelong anonymity.
“The risks relating to the sending of bulk emails are long established and well known, so there was no excuse for the force to break the law – especially when such sensitive and confidential information was involved.”
The case was dealt with under the provisions and maximum penalties of the Data Protection Act 1998, and not the 2018 Act which has replaced it, because of the date of the breach.
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