UK complaints soar over abuse of private data

Complaints about abuse of privacy and electronic communications data have soared since 2014, according to the British privacy watchdog, which is to be able to levy higher fines on those making nuisance calls and sending spam texts. More than 180,000 complaints were made from January 2015 to April, according to the Information Commissioner’s Office, a rise of more than 10 percent, as homeowners were bombarded by telephone calls and text messages trying to sell anything from solar panels to diet pills.

Christopher Graham, information commissioner, said calls from the “merchants of menace” were “making lives a misery”. Separately the independent body received 14,268 complaints about the abuse of data protection in 2014, and resolved just over 15,000 -- a figure that includes some complaints from the previous year. This was lower than the 2013 total after efforts to weed out ineligible concerns. “The numbers are still huge,” said Graham. A wide range of organisations ask for and store personal data, although the greatest concerns are around data collected without consent or knowledge.