The Data Protection Act of 1984 implemented the regulations that were created during the 1981 European Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data. The Data Protection Act UK offers a legal foundation for UK residents’ privacy, security, and protection of their data. The Data Protection Act cited restrictions on companies that hold or collect data of a living person with the exemption of domestic use like keeping a directory or address book. Such data that are being collected and stored are those that can identify a living person. This includes names, birth dates, anniversaries, addresses, telephone number, mobile numbers, fax numbers, e-mails, and others.

Data Protection Act states that all information gathered by any person or organization shall only be used for the certain purpose they were collected. Meaning, if a company such as a bank, keep their customers’ personal information when they opened an account with them, they cannot use it for other purposes like using the phone number to contact the customer just to sell them insurance policies. These personal data that organizations have acquired can only be saved for an appropriate length of time. At the same time, the Data Protection Act does not allow any organization to disclose personal data to other parties without the consent of the data owner.

Now, the 1984 Data Protection Act has already been repealed in 1998. Below is a Data Protection Act 1998 summary. The Data Protection Act 1998 implements the regulations created during the European Union Directive 95/46/EC. It has extended the dispatch of Data Protection Registrar changing the position to Data Protection Commissioner. There were slightly different provisions in the Data Protection Act from 1998 to 2007.
If you are already asking yourself, “how does the data protection act affect me”, well not only residents from UK avail of services from companies that hold their personal data. Any person from any country has probably shared the personal information with different types of organization. An example would be the data you share with schools and universities. Another is when opening bank accounts, or joining club memberships. When you apply for a job, you are also leaving your personal data with a company that may or may not hire you.

Now, with the Data Protection Act and organisations from all over the world that provide the same rights to their citizens, individuals are provided security from companies that abuse the use of their personal data. Such would be selling personal information to a marketing company. If you want an easy guide to the Data Protection Act, go online and start searching today!