Technology

Posted on August 30, 2018 by staff

GDPR causes huge spike in UK data complaints

Technology

Complaints about data protection have more than doubled in the UK since the introduction of GDPR in May.

The Information Commissioner’s Office, which enforces the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, received 6,281 complaints from May 25th – when the new rules were introduced – to July 3rd, compared with 2,417 in the same period last year.

The figures were reported by commercial law firm EMW and confirmed by the ICO. Complaints involving financial services made up one in ten of the total.

Companies found breaching the GDPR legislation could be fined up to €20 million or 4 per cent of its annual global turnover.

An ICO spokesperson said: “It’s early days and we will collate, analyse and publish official statistics in due course.

“But generally, as anticipated, we have seen a rise in personal data breach reports from organisations.

“Complaints relating to data protection issues are also up and, as more people become aware of their individual rights, we are expecting the number of complaints to the ICO to increase too.”

The ICO is growing its staff base from 530 to 720, almost double that of 2015. Its funding is set to increase from £24 million to £38m in 2018-19.