Barnsley Data Breach Solicitors – Expert Claims Support
Welcome to our guide to claiming compensation with data breach solicitors covering Barnsley. Data breaches can be a gross violation of one’s privacy. So, if you have experienced a data breach in Barnsley, you may have experienced emotional distress. Your data breach could have also led to financial losses if criminals used your data for fraudulent activities, for example. So, all in all, experiencing a data breach can be harmful on many different levels.
In the UK, the General Data Protection Regulation requires those that use your personal data to protect it.
What can you do if your personal data security has been breached? You could be able to claim compensation after the data breach. To make a successful claim for compensation for a personal data breach under the UK GDPR, you will need to prove that you experienced emotional distress as a result. Or you will need to provide evidence that the data breach led to financial losses. Alternatively, you could claim for both.
You’d also need to show that the party that was supposed to protect your personal data failed to do so because of positive wrongful conduct.
Legal Expert can help you if you have experienced a data breach in Barnsley. One of our skilled data breach lawyers can handle your compensation claim if has a favourable chance. Our data breach solicitors have solid experience handling GDPR data breach compensation claims. Please contact us using the details below to see if you can begin your claim.
- Call our claims helpline on 0800 073 8804
- Or use our online claims form to reach us
Select A Section
- Our Guide On Claiming With Data Breach Solicitors Covering Barnsley
- What Is The Definition Of A Data Breach?
- Examples Of How Data Breaches Happen
- How Many Data Breaches Occurred In 2021?
- How Do You Pursue A Claim For A Breach Of The Data Protection Act?
- Data Breach Settlement Amounts
- Find A Data Breach Solicitor For Barnsley Who Offers A No Win No Fee Service
- Discuss Your Case With A Data Breach Solicitor For Barnsley
- How Else Could Data Breach Solicitors For Barnsley Help You?
Our Guide On Claiming With Data Breach Solicitors Covering Barnsley
This guide will explain how data breaches can happen. We will also look at how data breach solicitors for Barnsley can help you claim compensation. What’s more, we will calculate how much compensation you can claim if the security of your personal data has been breached. The guide will also look at how data protection is practised in the UK and what your rights are under the Data Protection Act 2018.
Do You Have To Work With Data Breach Solicitors Near You To Handle Your Claim?
No, our data breach solicitors can work for you from anywhere in the country. We recommend using a solicitor with relevant experience to handle your claim. Legal Expert’s data breach solicitors cover the Barnsley area. To see if you can begin your data breach claim, please contact us today.
Data Breach Claim Time Limits
There is generally a 6-year time limit to make a data breach claim against non-public bodies. But, the time limit could be 1 year if the claim is against a public body, such as a council. Please feel free to call our advisors to see which time limit applies to your claim.
What Is The Definition Of A Data Breach?
Personal data or personal information is anything that can be used to identify you, whether alone or with other data. For instance, your date of birth and name are examples of personal information.
A data breach happens when personal data is lost, accessed, altered, destroyed or disclosed without permission or another lawful reason. It can be accidental or deliberate.
Why Do Data Breaches Happen?
Organisations process personal data for operational purposes. An employee at an organisation may expose personal data by accident. Under the UK GDPR, organisations should invest in staff training to help prevent data breaches.
However, a data breach can also happen if cybercriminals attack an organisation. So, under the General Data Protection Regulation, organisations are also required to have a security system to prevent cyberattacks and hacking attacks.
Can You Claim Compensation For A Breach Of Data Protection?
If an organisation did not take adequate precautions to protect your personal data, you might be entitled to compensation for a data breach if it results. Please get in touch with Legal Expert today to speak to an advisor and, hopefully, begin your claim for data breach compensation. Our data protection solicitors for Barnsley handle all sorts of data breach claims.
Examples Of How Data Breaches Can Happen
Let’s look at some examples of how a personal data breach can happen below.
- A data breach at a council could occur if unauthorised persons can access a room where personal information files are kept.
- A bank data breach can occur if criminals hack into a bank’s security system and steal financial information. The victims could make a bank data breach compensation claim.
- School data breaches could occur if a staff member accidentally sends a letter containing personal data about a child to the wrong parent. Therefore, the school would share the student’s data with a third party without a lawful reason.
- A medical data breach can happen if hospital staff accidentally destroy a patient’s medical records. Therefore, important medical information will no longer be accessible.
- A university could accidentally email a file containing personal data to an unauthorised party. Therefore a university data breach would take place that would violate the student’s privacy.
- An employee at a company could publish their colleagues’ names and contact details on the dark web. Subsequently, the data leak would violate the worker’s privacy.
Are you a parent whose child’s personal data was breached by a school or local council? Legal Expert could provide you with a No Win No Fee solicitor to handle your data breach claim.
How Many Data Breaches Occured In 2021?
You may be wondering how many data breaches have occurred in 2021. At the time of writing, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has published the data security incident trends for Q1 and Q2 2021/22. Let’s look at how many data breaches have happened in that year so far.
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- There were 4,983 reports of data breaches made to the ICO during this period.
- There were 3,581 reports of data breaches that did not involve a cyber security incident.
- And there were 1,402 reports of data breaches that involved a cyber security incident.
- The sectors that caused the highest number of data breaches included health, education, childcare, and local government.
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The ICO is an independent agency that enforces data protection law in the UK.
How Do You Pursue A Claim For A Breach Of The Data Protection Act?
If you wish to pursue a claim it can help to have a solicitor on your side. Legal Expert could connect you with data breach solicitors covering Barnsley to handle your compensation claim. Your solicitor will be able to assess your case in-depth and value your claim. Then, the solicitor will try to negotiate with the defendant so you can receive the right amount of compensation.
A breach of the Data Protection Act 2018 may not lead to a personal data breach. However, if it does, and your rights and freedoms are risked, you should be notified of this without undue delay. The organisation that was supposed to protect your personal data should do this.
If you believe you have discovered a breach of your personal data, what should you do? We recommend that you notify the organisation that you believe was supposed to protect your personal data but failed to. After that, the organisation should be able to solve the problem.
However, if the organisation does not handle your complaint properly, you could report the data breach to the Information Commissioner’s Office to investigate it. However, please make sure that you report the breach of data protection within three months of the final response from the organisation. Otherwise, the ICO may not look into it.
Data Breach Settlement Amounts
As we have mentioned, a data breach can cause emotional distress. Furthermore, it may cause psychiatric injuries. Indeed some people develop depression, symptoms akin to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or anxiety after a data breach.
If your personal data is breached, this sometimes means that your personal information can fall into the wrong hands. Therefore, criminals may use your data to target you for identity theft or fraud. Consequently, you may lose money or other valuable assets because of a data breach.
Should you file a successful claim, you could receive up to two types of data breach settlement amounts:
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- Material damages are compensation for any financial losses incurred because of the breach.
- And non-material damages compensate you for any emotional distress or psychiatric injuries experienced because of it.
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You can use the table below to calculate how much compensation you could claim for non-material damages. But these amounts are approximate. We have based these compensation settlement amounts on guidelines from the Judicial College. (This is a publication solicitors use to value injuries.)
| Severity | Mental Health Issue | Further Information | Potential Damages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Less severe | Psychiatric injury | This level of award takes into account: how long the disability period lasted and how much everyday activities and sleep were impacted. | Up to £5,500 |
| Moderate | Psychiatric injury | The injury could have been triggered by an event which is traumatic or stressful. The person could experience some minor symptoms after recovery. | £5,500 – £17,900 |
| Moderately severe | Psychiatric injury | Conditions may have been triggered by traumatic events. The person may recovery fully but still experience some degree of symptoms after recovery. | £17,900 – £51,460 |
| Severe | Psychiatric injury | The most severe symptoms and effects are included in the bracket. This could have been triggered by a traumatic event and the victim is likely to have some onging mental health issues over the foreseeable future. | £51,460 – £108,620 |
Please feel free to call us, and an advisor can accurately estimate how much compensation you can claim.
Find A Data Breach Solicitor For Barnsley Who Offers A No Win No Fee Service
Legal Expert can provide you with data breach solicitors for Barnsley, offering their services on a No Win No Fee basis. A No Win No Fee claim means that you fund your solicitor by paying a success fee if you win your claim.
In the instance that your claim is not successful, you will not have to pay a success fee. What’s more, your solicitor will deduct their success fee from your compensation payout. So, you don’t need to be concerned about finding the money to pay for your solicitor’s services upfront.
Many claimants prefer to make a No Win No Fee claim. After all, they find it can be less stressful because they will not have to pay a success fee if they do not win their claim. Moreover, there is not an upfront solicitor’s fee to pay. So, it may be the more affordable way to claim.
Another advantage of making a No Win No Fee claim is that if you win, most of the compensation settlement goes straight to you. Please call to speak to an advisor about making a No Win No Fee claim.
Discuss Your Case With A Data Breach Solicitor For Barnsley
If a data breach in Barnsley has caused you to suffer, you may be owed compensation. To find data breach solicitors covering Barnsley, please contact Legal Expert today. Our solicitors have sound experience handling data breach compensation claims. What’s more, if your claim is accepted, they can handle it on a No Win No Fee basis, so it is more affordable for you.
To see if you can begin your breach of data protection claim:
- Call us today on 0800 073 8804.
- Alternatively, contact us via LegalExpert.co.uk via our claim online form.
- Or, use our Live Support widget to chat with an advisor now.
If we can see that you have good grounds for compensation, one of our data breach solicitors will start working on your claim right away.
How Else Could Data Breach Solicitors For Barnsley Help You?
We hope this guide has answered any questions you may have about how you pursue a claim for a breach of the Data Protection Act 2018. Please read these online guides if you would like to learn more about working with a data breach lawyer.
Psychological Injury Claims – Claiming compensation if you have experienced a psychological injury. The injury could be stress due to a data breach or PTSD, for example.
Avon and Somerset Police Data Breach – Our guide on what you could do after a police data breach.
Sheffield Hallam University Data Breach – An article on what steps you could take following a university data breach.
How to report a data breach to the ICO.
How to report a data breach to Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council.
A government guide to avoiding phishing scams and online fraud.
We hope you have enjoyed this guide about how data breach solicitors covering Barnsley could help you.
Written by Chelache
Edited by Victorine
