Salisbury Data Breach Solicitors – Expert Claims Support
Should an organisation have breached your personal data, exposing it, in a Salisbury data breach, you could be searching for data breach solicitors for Salisbury claims. You could, after all, be eligible to make a claim for compensation if your data is exposed due to an organisation’s wrongdoing. But how do you go about finding data breach lawyers to help you, and how do you know whether you have a valid claim for data breach compensation?
How this guide could help you
Data breach solicitors for Salisbury
This guide is here to offer you insight and guidance on making data breach compensation claims. In it we explain how to make a No Win No Fee claim and describe the role of the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) in enforcing the data protection legislation that protects your data rights. We also offer answers to some of the frequently asked questions about data breach claims, such as:
- What types of data breach are there?
- How could a data breach lead to compensation?
- If I suffer a breach, how do I go about reporting it?
- How is compensation for a breach of personal information calculated?
- If a Salisbury City Council data breach occurred could No Win No Fee solicitors help?
- How long would I have to claim for a breach of data protection relating to a public body?
- What is a Conditional Fee Agreement?
- How do I find data breach claim solicitors to help me?
Should you wish to speak to us about making a claim for a GDPR data breach because you have suffered harm due to an organisation’s wrongdoing in exposing your data, please get in touch. We could investigate your eligibility to make a claim. Our No Win No Fee data breach solicitors for Salisbury could offer to take on any valid claim. All you need to do is call us on 0800 073 8804.
Select a Section
- A Guide To Data Breach Solicitors For Salisbury
- What Is A Data Breach?
- How Do Data Breaches Occur?
- Are Data Breaches Common?
- Do I Need The Help Of Data Protection Breach Solicitors To Take Action?
- Can I Get Compensation For A Data Breach?
- Working With No Win No Fee Data Breach Solicitors For Salisbury
- Get Help From Our Data Breach Solicitors For Salisbury
- More Help From Our Data Breach Solicitors For Salisbury
A Guide To Data Breach Solicitors For Salisbury
You might not always think about it very often, but there are lots of organisations in Salisbury that could process your data. This could include organisations such as Salisbury City Council, the local hospital or NHS trust, banks and building societies, to name but a few.
Other organisations that could process your personal data could include credit card companies, financial institutes, educational institutes or private businesses. Whatever the reason an organisation processes personal data, they have a legal obligation to protect it from being exposed. If a Local Authority data breach or a University data breach exposes your data, you may wonder does this qualify you for data breach compensation?
How the law protects you
The laws governing the protection of personal data have somewhat changed since the introduction of the EU law, the General Data Protection Regulation. The GDPR, as it is often referred to was enshrined in UK law in the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). Since the UK left the EU, this has been updated to reflect the withdrawal. The UK GDPR now runs alongside the updated Data Protection Act 2018.
Under the UK GDPR if it is proven that an organisation that has processed your data (often referred to as a data controller) fails to take all necessary steps to protect your personal information and your data is breached then compensation can be awarded for financial loss as well as mental suffering.
We should mention here that while the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has a vital role in enforcing data protection law in the UK, it does not pay compensation to victims of data protection breaches. If you would like to claim data breach compensation, you would need to make a civil claim. This guide explains what data rights you have when claiming compensation for a data breach.
What Is A Data Breach?
The ICO defines a personal data breach as a data security incident that results in unlawful or unauthorised:
- Disclosure, transmission alteration or deletion of personal data
- Theft or loss of personal data
- Access to personal data
Breaches of the Data Protection Act could happen by accident or could result from malicious behaviour. To make a claim with data breach solicitors for Salisbury, you would need to prove that a breach occurred. You would also need to provide evidence that it was due to wrongdoing on the organisations part. Further to this, you’d need to prove that it exposed your data and the exposure of your data caused you harm.
The harm could be material, such as someone stealing money from you. Or, it could be emotional if you suffer anxiety, PTSD, distress or depression, for example. You could claim for either type of damages or both, depending on the effects of the breach.
How Do Data Breaches Occur?
As we have mentioned, a potential Salisbury data breach could happen for a number of reasons. These could be accidental or malicious. You might be under the misapprehension that cyber criminality causes the vast majority of data breaches. However, this is not the case. Many breaches are caused by human error. Examples of these types of breaches could include:
- A data controller could breach your personal data if they send your personal information to someone else in error, by email, fax or letter.
- A Salisbury employer could breach employees’ personal data if they failed to redact personal information before sending it to a third party
- A hospital could breach your personal data if they disclose your medical information to a third party without a lawful basis.
- A breach of the Data Protection Act could occur if an organisation fails to properly dispose of hardware or paperwork containing personal data
Getting help
These are just a few examples of how a data breach could occur. Remember, you would need to prove that your data had been exposed, and this had caused you harm to claim. You would also need to be able to evidence wrongdoing on the part of the organisation that breached your data.
If you would like assistance from data breach solicitors for Salisbury, we could provide this to you. We could assess your eligibility to make a No Win No Fee claim. If we believe you could have a valid case, we could help you to get started on the journey towards compensation.
Are Data Breaches Common?
In terms of nationwide statistics, we could look to the ICO for their latest figures. According to their Q2 2021/22 statistics, the number of reports of data security incidents had fallen from Q1 2019/20 3,091 to 2,431 in Q2 2021/22. The largest number of reports relate to the health sector, with the most common reason for a breach being data that was emailed to the wrong recipient.
Do I Need The Help Of Data Protection Breach Solicitors To Take Action?
Having a data breach solicitor represent your case is not a legal requirement. However, data breach law in some respects can be complex and a solicitor who specialises in this area of law can ensure your claim is filed correctly. Once a claim is settled there is no way to go back and ask for more if you did not include all losses the first time around.
If you suspect a data breach has occurred that has affected your information you should contact the organisation directly. You could make a subject access request and ask for them to investigate. They have a responsibility to work with you to address your concerns. If no satisfactory response is given by the data controller, the data subject could approach the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 3 months of the last meaningful contact with the organisation, and ask them to investigate the breach.
You do not have to report your concerns to the ICO to launch a claim, however. Data breach solicitors for Salisbury could help you fight for compensation. However, they could only do this if an organisation has wrongfully exposed your data, leading to emotional or financial harm.
Can I Get Compensation For A Data Breach?
You could only receive compensation for a Salisbury data breach if it occurs due to wrongdoing on an organisation’s part. You would also have to be able to prove that the organisation exposed your data in the data breach. The breach of your personal data and its exposure must have caused you harm in some way. Under the UK GDPR you could claim compensation for both material and or non-material damages. If you’re wondering what these are, we explain them further below.
- Material damages – these relate to financial losses and costs caused by a breach. This could include damages for money that someone has stolen from you, or costs for repairing credit scores.
- Non-material damages – these could include damages for psychological injury, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and stress.
How to calculate non-material damages
You would need to be able to evidence the damages that you had suffered. An independent medical report could help you to evidence your psychological injuries. These could be compensated for in a similar manner to personal injury claims, where the medical report could be measured against the Judicial College guidelines to come to an appropriate compensation amount.
We’ve included some figures from the Judicial College guidelines in the below table. This could act as a rough claims calculator, to give you an idea of what compensation could be achievable in some cases.
| Nature of injury | How Severe is the injury | Compensation Bracket |
|---|---|---|
| General psychiatric Injury/ies | Severe | £51,460 to £108,620 |
| Post-traumatic stress disorders/ PTSD | Severe | £56,180 to £94,470 |
| Post-traumatic stress disorders/ PTSD | Moderately severe | £21,730 to £56,180 |
| General psychiatric Injury/ies | Moderately severe | £17,900 to £51,460 |
| Post-traumatic stress disorders/ PTSD | Moderate | £7,680 to £21,730 |
| General psychiatric Injury/ies | Moderate | £5,500 to £17,900 |
| Post-traumatic stress disorders/ PTSD | Less severe | £3,710 to £7,680 |
| General psychiatric Injury/ies | Less severe | £1,440 to £5,500 |
Working With No Win No Fee Data Breach Solicitors For Salisbury
Making a No Win No Fee claim under a Conditional Fee Agreement might be something you’re considering. If you sign a No Win No Fee agreement you would not have to pay data breach solicitors covering Salisbury claims upfront. Instead, by signing the Conditional Fee Agreement, you would agree to pay them a success fee. This would be payable at the end of your claim. This would only be payable if your claim results in compensation, however. We have created a guide to making No Win No Fee claims which you can take a look at here to learn more about them.
Assessing whether you could make a No Win No Fee claim
Before a solicitor could take on your claim under a No Win No Fee agreement, they would have to make sure it had a favourable chance of succeeding. They would have to determine:
- Whether you were claiming within the limitation period applicable to your claim. According to the Limitation Act 1980, you would usually have 6 years to start your claim. In some instances, this can be reduced to one year when claiming against a public body.
- If a data breach happened, whether it was due to wrongdoing on the organisations part, and whether it caused you harm.
We would be happy to assess your case to see if you could have a valid Salisbury data breach claim. Whether you are looking to claim for a university data breach, local council data breach, post office data breach or a data breach by a financial organisation, such as a bank data breach we could provide you with a data breach solicitor to help you with your claim.
Get Help From Our Data Breach Solicitors For Salisbury
Are you ready to get help from data breach solicitors for Salisbury claims? If so why not call our team for assistance. You can take a look at our reviews that previous claimants have left before you call us, or you could simply get in touch via:
- Phone: 0800 073 8804
- Live Chat
- E-mail: info@legalexpert.co.uk
- Contact form
More Help From Our Data Breach Solicitors For Salisbury
Medical Negligence In Salisbury – We could also assist with medical negligence claims for Salisbury claimants. Find out more here.
Car Accident Claims In Salisbury – Find out more about making claims for car accidents that occur in Salisbury.
Personal Injury Solicitors Covering Salisbury – We could help with personal injury claims of all types.
ICO Guide To Data Protection – Find out what the ICO has to say about data protection here.
Government’s Cyber Security Breach Survey – You can read the government’s survey results here.
Guidance On Data Breaches – The NCSC offers guidance for individuals and families.
Thank you for reading our guide to data breach solicitors for Salisbury claims.
Guide By Jefferies
Edited By Melissa.
