Information Commissioner's Office - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Google to change UK privacy policy after regulatory pressure

  Google has agreed to improve the information it provides to people about how it collects personal data in the U.K., after it was required to do so by country's data protection authority.

• Governments act against webcam-snooping websites

  Government officials in the US and the UK are warning people to secure their webcams after websites that broadcast the contents of those cameras have sprung up online.

• Data protection authorities find privacy lapses in majority of mobile apps

  Many mobile apps request too many permissions and don't explain how they collect users' personal information, a study of 1,211 popular apps by the Global Privacy Enforcement Network has found.

• Google ordered to change its privacy policy in the UK

  The U.K. Information Commissioners Office has ordered Google to change the privacy policy it introduced in March 2012 to make it more informative for users.

• UK cracks down on claims industry SMS spam

  Text-message spam is coming under close scrutiny from the U.K.'s data protection authority, which is trying to blunt an increasing wave of insurance industry and accident compensation-related spam.

• USB sticks still being used insecurely, Ponemon study finds

  USB sticks remain a big security weakness for many UK organisations with many employees using drives for data transport without permission and not bothering to report their loss, a Ponemon Institute study has found.

• Laptop with 8.6 million NHS records vanishes from hospital

  A laptop containing unencrypted medical data for 8.63 million people has reportedly gone missing from a storeroom of a health authority in London, potentially the biggest data loss disaster ever to befall the NHS.

• Information Commissioner: Over 1,000 data breaches reported

  The number of data breaches reported to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has reached 1,007 as of today.