On page 74 of the Information Commissioner’s newly published Annual Report, you can find the welcome news that the ICO reduced the amount of water in flushing toilets and the timings of auto flushing in urinals. Sadly, the expansion of the organisation’s footprint in Wilmslow, due to swelling numbers of staff, has led to an […]
As we all endure the lockdown and the uncertainty about when and how it might end, I have been trying to avoid thinking about the past. It’s tempting to dwell on the last time I went to the cinema (Home, Manchester ironically to watch ‘The Lighthouse’), the last time I went to a pub (Tweedies […]
Last week, I wrote a blog about the ‘personal data agency’ Yo-Da, outlining my concerns about their grandiose claims, the lack of detail about how their service works and their hypocritical decision to ignore a subject access request I made to them. Predictably, this led to further online tussles between myself and Benjamin Falk, the […]
A few months ago, I wrote a blog about data protection and nonsense, highlighting inaccurate claims made by training companies, marketers and pressure groups. A bad tempered spat ensued in comments on LinkedIn between myself and Russell James, the marketer behind the lobbying attempt to change the ICO’s funding model to include cost recovery. James […]
One of the features of the GDPR which is superficially similar to the old Data Protection Act but turns out to be quite different is the requirement to provide information about how personal data is being used. The word ‘transparency’ is an inherent part of the GDPR first principle, whereas it was absent from the […]
To say that anything connected with GDPR is the worst example of its kind is a foolhardy business. I’ve read so many terrible articles, LinkedIn posts and Tweets about GDPR, to single any one of them out and say ‘THIS ONE IS THE WORST’ seems pointless. Most of them are bad. However, after watching 33 […]
Just about a month ago, I had a little Twitter disagreement with Paul-Olivier Dehaye, patron saint of subject access requests. He said his tool for making subject access was brilliant and revolutionary, and I said it was shit. There was a bit more to it than that, but I was hoping to make this a […]
In March, I received an unsolicited email from a company called Gravicus. It was scaremongering nonsense, touting their data management software via the threat of director liability for data breaches. So far, so what: I get a lot of spammy junk from GDPR people to my 2040 Training email address, but this was to a […]
There’s an old joke about a tourist in Ireland asking for directions and getting the reply ‘If I was you, I wouldn’t start from here’. To anyone in the position of wondering whether to contact all of the people on their mailing list to get GDPR-standard consent to send marketing, fund-raising or promotional emails and […]
The list of things that annoy me about the explosion of hype and bullshit around GDPR is long and boring (NOTE TO SELF: this list should be a blog post of its own). I cannot say that top of the list are those badges that folk give their products, boasting about being “GDPR Ready”, or […]
