A data breach is a serious breach of your privacy, and also your trust in the organization that has breached your data. In some situations, the company may contact you to inform you that your information has been part of a breach, but this is not always the case, and you might not find out until you are the victim of fraud as a result of the breach. If you suspect your data has been breached, be sure to investigate it further and find out for sure as you could be entitled to data-breach.com
If you are eligible for a data breach claim, you will have had personal information mistakenly shared by a company or public authority. You won’t have given permission for the organization to share these details, and so you could end up having your data compromised, leaving you vulnerable to further criminal activity. This potentially could cause you a lot of emotional distress or financial loss.
How To Know If You’re Eligible To Make A Claim For Compensation
Under the GDPR and DPA, you are entitled to make a data breach claim for compensation if the following has happened to you.
- Your personal data was lost, leaked, disclosed, corrupted, hacked, or misused
- A third party obtained your information without your consent
- The breach was intentional or due to negligence
- The breach occurred within less than six years
- You haven’t experienced any financial loss; you can still make a claim for the emotional distress and impact the situation has had on your life
- The company has offered you free credit monitoring or a similar service
When Can You Make A Data Breach Claim?
As a result of the large volume of data breaches, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was introduced in 2018. The GDPR laws say that you are able to make a data breach claim if you believe your data has been breached.
If the organization declines your claim, and you can’t settle things outside of court, you have the right to take the matter to court and make a legal claim for compensation. However, it is important to note that you are required to let the defendant know that you intend to take them to court.
What Do You Need To Show When Making A Claim For Compensation?
To successfully claim your compensation, you will need to show that the company or organization failed to take all the necessary steps to ensure the protection and security of your data and that because of their negligence, your information was released or made available to third parties without your consent. Any company that is storing your data is obliged to effectively handle it and keep it safe, meaning a claim for compensation can be made if:
- The breach could have occurred as a result of the data being lost or hacked
- Released to another party without your permission
- The information is kept by the company was outdated and the inaccuracy of which has caused you damage. For example, this might relate to your financial details
- Personal or sensitive information has been used in an inappropriate manner and not what it was collected for
How Can You Avoid A Data Breach?
Sometimes data breaches happen without warning and cannot be avoided, however, there are things you can do to keep your data safe and lower the risk of experiencing a breach.
1) Keep security software updated
It is important to make sure that you make use of some of the best security software available, and when you have it, don’t ignore the update reminders. The updates are typically introduced to respond to new data breach threats that need to be protected.
2) Backup and encrypt your data
Encrypting your data can prevent unauthorized individuals from gaining access to it, and it helps to regularly back up your data. It is recommended that you backup your data on a cloud data backup service instead of hardware that might become corrupted or stolen.
3) Protect yourself on social media
It is essential that you read the platform’s terms and conditions, use strong and hard to guess passwords, don’t contact anonymous accounts, and limit the information you share on your account.
Final Words
For more information on data, breaches head to the Data Breach Claims website where you can find out if you can claim and if so how much it could be.
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