Data Privacy Complaints Double in UK under GDPR

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the United Kingdom has reported that complaints to its office have doubled since GDPR went into effect in May. According to the information recently released through a FOIA request, there were 6,281 complaints to the ICO between May 25 and July 3, while last year there were only 2,417 complaints during the same period.

A spokesperson for the organization said that they expect the number of complaints to increase as more people become aware of their individual rights under the new law. The ICO did not identify how many of the new cases were related to the General Data Protection Regulation. 660 complaints, about ten percent of the total, involved the financial services sector. The education and health sectors combined for approximately 1,100 complaints.

It is probably safe to assume a fair number of the overall total of complaints dealt with either forced consent or the data subject access rights (the right to access, delete, export and correct) as those have been two of the leading issues for businesses interacting with consumers.

Ireland previously identified more than 1,300 concerns or complaints to the Data Protection Commission between the effective date for GDPR at the end of May and June. It said that it received about 700 telephone calls and over 650 emails to its information service between May 25th and May 31st.

Reports of data breaches under GDPR’s 72 hour breach notification requirement are also up. The UK ICO previously reported that it received 1,750 data breach reports in June compared to 400 in March and April before Europe’s new privacy law went into effect. The Irish Data Protection commission also noted an increase in the number of data breaches reported in the first two months after GDPR.

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Other Blog Posts on GDPR Enforcment:

More DPAs Issuing GDPR Fines and Warnings
EDPB Releases Guidelines on Territorial Scope of GDPR
EDPB Releases Comments on DPIA Requirements under Article 35.4
Dutch Question Microsoft Over Office Data Telemetry Collection Violations under GDPR
Austria Issues First GDPR Fine
Privacy Complaints Up in France after GDPR
ICO Threatens Max GDPR Fine to AggregateIQ
ULD DPA Issues Ban on Data Processing Under GDPR
German DPA Circulates GDPR Compliance Survey