A scam letter is being sent out to businesses from a
company purporting to be an official body under the Data Protection
Act. Don't be taken in, warns Simon Moores.
I have narrowly avoided falling into an idiot trap. Not
the one where a Netherlands-based Nigerian offers to wash a hundred
million dollars through my Halifax savings account, but a much
cleverer one from a village at the northern end of the Yorkshire
moors.
I knew about the Data Protection Act "scam" and I’ll call it
that, although legally it has fallen through a gap in the law. The
letter I received looked quite convincing. It warned me that I
might not have properly complied with the Data Protection Act of
1998 and that I should immediately complete the enclosed forms DP1
DP2 and Appendix A to determine my position as a "Data
Controller".
There was lots of e-mail and post to go through after the bank
holiday, so I swiftly ran my eyes over the letter and started
completing the form. I even wrote the return envelope and signed
the declaration. And then I stopped, because it was asking me for
£95, and I’m notoriously tight-fisted.
Since when, unless you wish to have a "briefing" at the Office
of the Deputy Prime Minister – which will set you back £161 – do
you have to pay to find out whether you have fallen foul of the
Data Protection Registrar?
A closer look at the letterhead revealed that this was from the
Data Processing Protection Corporation (DPPC), which is
"registered" in England and Wales and is trying very hard to
relieve the gullible and the overworked of £95.
As government increasingly finds new and more creative ways of
squeezing taxes out of business, companies - and I use the term
loosely - like DPPC find equally creative ways of making a living
from people like me who were almost too busy to check whether a
letter, which appeared to be from the Data Protection Registrar,
actually was.
I ask you, would anyone really be surprised if government
decided to stick a £95 charge on Data Protection registration? It’s
this complacency which DPPC counts on, our rather loose trust
relationship with the Treasury.
In the same pile of mail as the letter from DPPC was a bright
red final demand from HM Customs & Excise. I have written about
this before, but in the age of joined-up government, sending in
your VAT return on time causes them all kind of problems,
particularly if you also happen to pay electronically.
“You're unusual”, I was told by the VAT collections supervisor.
“It makes us look silly, as all this money is being spent on
modernisation and at the basic level, it’s not working as it should
be, with my people having to write figures into the printed demand
by hand."
The moral of the story is that life in the speed camera society
is littered with digital idiot traps and that frequently,
well-intentioned technology in the hands of HM Treasury can create
more problems than it solves.
What do you think?
Have you been caught out by the data protection scam?
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Setting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of leading industry analyst Dr Simon Moores of
Zentelligence.
Acting globally, Zentelligence (Research) advises
governments, suppliers, business and the media on the evolution,
application and delivery of leading-edge technologies and
specialises in the areas of eGovernment and information
security.
For further information on Zentelligence and its research,
presentation and analyst services visitwww.zentelligence.com