ICO commenced criminal proceedings over theft of road traffic accident data
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has commenced criminal proceedings against eight individuals over the alleged unlawful accessing and obtaining of people’s personal information from vehicle repair garages to generate potential leads for personal injury claims.
The alleged activity took place across the UK between 1 December 2014 and 30 November 2017. The defendants are alleged to have conspired together to access and obtain the personal data of hundreds of thousands of individuals without the consent of the companies concerned.
The defendants will now face prosecution for conspiring to commit an offence under section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, relating to the alleged unlawful accessing of personal data held on computers, and conspiring to commit an offence under section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998, relating to the alleged unlawful obtaining of personal data.
