By Stephen Hudson. Last Updated 20 August 2025. Welcome to our GDPR data breach claims guide. This covers everything that you should know about making a data breach compensation claim. And this is generally the result of your stress due to a data breach. This guide offers guidance on the amount of GDPR data breach compensation you may receive, depending on the circumstances of your case.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is legislation introduced by the European Union (EU) in 2016. If you suffered from a GDPR breach, you could have grounds to make a compensation claim. To prove that data protection breach claims are valid, you must show you suffered harm because of a data breach. That applies whether the harm is in the form of distress, financial loss, or both.

Our guide to claiming compensation for stress due to a data breach provides essential reading on how to go about proving you were harmed in some way. We explain what a data breach entails and how this could negatively impact you emotionally and financially.

If you would like to discuss a compensation claim that is data breach-related with one of the Legal Expert advisers, please get in touch today.

You can contact an advisor in the following ways:

• • Telephone on 0800 073 8804
  • Use our 24-hour online live chat on your screen
  • Fill out our online contact us form

 

Select A Section

1. Could You Claim For Emotional Distress Caused By A Data Breach?
2. Types Of Data Protection Or Privacy Breaches
3. Examples Of How A Personal Data Breach Can Cause Stress
4. What Evidence Do I Need To Support My Data Breach Claim?
5. What Should I Do If I Suffer Stress Due To A Data Breach?
6. Data Breach Distress Compensation – What Damages Can Be Claimed?
7. Breach Of UK GDPR – How Compensation For Distress Is Calculated
8. No Win No Fee Claims For Stress Due To A Data Breach
9. Quick Links

Could You Claim For Emotional Distress Caused By A Data Breach?

You may be entitled to start a claim for stress due to a data breach if you can prove the following:

• Your personal information has been affected due to a data breach.
• The data breach has caused you to suffer psychological harm or financial losses.
• The breach occurred as a result of wrongful conduct.

A data controller determines why and how your personal information will be processed. They may also carry out the task of processing your personal information, or they hand this job to a data processor. A data processor takes care of processing personal data on behalf of a data controller.

While they are handling personal data, both data controllers and data processors must comply with certain procedures. These rules are set out within the  UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

If you would like to learn more about your eligibility to claim for a personal data breach that has caused you stress, you can talk to a member of our advisory team at any time for free.

Types Of Data Protection Or Privacy Breaches

Data breaches can happen in any organisation, industry, business, school, or government department and bank. However, service-based industries are most targeted due to the direct contact with the general public.

All of the following may have experienced data security breaches over recent years:

• Mobile phone networks
• Retailers
• Banks
• Tech companies

To speak to a Legal Expert about data protection breach claims, please contact one of our advisers today. You would be offered a free, initial, no-obligation consultation, which allows an advisor to assess your case before offering advice on how best to proceed.

Examples Of How A Personal Data Breach Can Cause Stress

“Psychological injuries” cover quite a lot of different conditions, and a breach of your personal data can cause various types of psychological harm. This will depend greatly on what data is lost, what impact it has on your life and other factors such as the level of financial loss caused.

This is why it’s very important to make sure you receive a professional diagnosis when seeking compensation for a data breach. We have provided a few ways you could experience stress due to a data breach here:

• A failure to update cybersecurity by your pension provider resulted in the account details and login information of a large number of customers being stolen in a cyber attack, including your own. This caused a significant level of stress and anxiety.
• Your employer had not provided sufficient data protection training to the administrative staff at your place of work. Multiple documents containing the payroll data of employees were left unsecured and later lost, enabling unauthorised persons to access them.
• After you won custody of your child, errors at the court resulted in details of your new address being sent to your old address, where your abusive ex-partner still resided. This resulted in that partner coming back into your and your child’s life, causing extensive distress to both you and your child.

To learn more about making a data breach distress claim in your particular circumstances, get in touch with an advisor today using the contact information given at the end of this guide.

What Evidence Do I Need To Support My Data Breach Claim?

To claim data breach distress compensation, you will need to provide evidence that confirms that your personal information has been involved in a data breach, and due to this, you suffered psychologically and financially. You also need to establish that the data breach was caused by a data controller or data processor’s positive wrongful conduct.

Examples of evidence that may support your claim include:

• A data breach notification letter should be sent out to all affected data subjects, informing them what has occurred and what personal information was impacted.
• Any correspondence with the organisation responsible regarding the breach.
•  A copy of your medical records that confirm the psychological injuries you have suffered and when you were diagnosed with them.
•  If you report the breach to the ICO, and they decide to investigate it, their findings could be used as evidence.

For more information on whether you can claim compensation for a breach of data protection that saw your personal data compromised, you can contact our advisors today. After discussing your case with our advisors, they may connect you with one of our solicitors if they believe you have a valid claim.

What Should I Do If I Suffer Stress Due To A Data Breach?

If you suffer from stress due to a data breach, here are some steps you could take:

• Confirm the data breach: If your personal information has been compromised, the data controller, or the organisation in control of your data, has to contact you. However, if they don’t inform you and you find out about the data breach on your own, you should contact them immediately.
• Report to the ICO: If you aren’t satisfied with the data controller’s response, you can complain to the ICO. While the ICO cannot award data breach distress compensation, it may impose penalties on the controller for any failure to implement adequate security measures.
• Start collecting evidence: As explained in the above section, it is important to gather evidence in support of your data breach compensation claim. The nature of the evidence should be such that it highlights the impact of the data breach on your mental health and the responsibility of the data controller.
• Obtain legal assistance: if you are considering claiming compensation, it is recommended that you get in touch with a solicitor. A data breach solicitor can help to calculate your compensation amount, collect evidence and handle other procedural aspects of your claim.

Get in touch with our team now to discuss your eligibility to claim GDPR compensation for distress.

Data Breach Distress Compensation – What Damages Can Be Claimed?

Compensation for distress and for financial losses are calculated differently.

Non-material damage compensation can be calculated with help from the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG). The JCG offers guideline compensation brackets for psychological injuries of differing severities. You can find some examples of the amounts listed in the table below.

Compensation table

Please note that these are guideline amounts only and are not guaranteed. Please also note that the first entry was not taken from the JCG.

Material damage compensation is unique to every claimant. This is because, as mentioned above, this head of claim tackles the financial losses of the breach. Because of this, we can’t offer any average or guideline figures for material damage compensation.

For more help with compensation in data breach claims, contact our team. One of our advisors can evaluate your claim for free.

No Win No Fee Claims For Stress Due To A Data Breach

If you contact our advisors about your potential claim for stress due to a data breach, they could review your case for free. If they determine you have a valid claim, they could connect you with one of our No Win No Fee solicitors. Our solicitors can represent eligible claimants with a particular No Win No Fee contract called a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA).

Claiming with a solicitor under this type of agreement brings several benefits. One is that you generally won’t need to pay your solicitor for their services at the start of your claim or while it’s being processed. You also won’t need to pay any solicitor fees if the claim is lost.

If your claim is successful, the only fee that is taken is the success fee, a small, legally capped amount deducted from your compensation. 

To learn more about how one of our No Win No Fee solicitors could help you make a data breach claim, contact our advisors for free today. To reach our team, you can:

• Call us on 0800 073 8804
• Use our 24 hour online live chat on your screen.
• Contact us online.

Quick Links

If you would like more information on the Data Protection Act, please click on the link provided below:

• A government guide to data protection

For more information on filing a complaint with the ICO or reporting a data breach, please follow the link below:

• More information on reporting a data breach to the ICO

To learn more about how No Win No Fee claims work, please click on the link below:

• Guide to No Win No Fee claims

Thank you for reading our guide about claiming compensation for stress due to a data breach.

If you still have any questions regarding data protection breach claims, you can contact us online or phone us on 0800 073 8804