Monthly Archives January 2015

January 31, 2015,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

Photograph by David Graeme-Baker

Earlier this week, the Worshipful Company of Marketors, the livery company representing the interests of marketing professionals in the City and the Financial Services Forum held a joint seminar on the subject of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) at Cass Business School, London. This was the first time that both organisations had collaborated on an issue that impacts the financial services sector more than any other sector.

Those taking part (left to right) were Martin Hickley, data governance, protection and privacy expert; Hazel Grant, partner and head of privacy and information law at Fieldfisher; Ardi Kolah, director of Go...

January 14, 2015,  News  No comments

Over the next 24 hours all eyes will be on US President Barak Obama as he plays host to the British PM David Cameron at the White House.

And whilst Anglo-American relations are warm and friendly, Obama’s body language will reveal his pan-European tendencies when it comes to security and data protection.

This is in sharp contrast to the reticence of David Cameron to an intra-country solution as advocated by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncke who’s determined to fast-track the EU General Data Protection Regulation this year.

David Cameron and Barak Obama have a working dinner tomorrow night and will meet in the Oval Office on Friday...

January 10, 2015,  News, Social marketing practice  No comments

Impatience with the progress of the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is starting to grow within the European Union.

A recent joint declaration adopted by representatives of the German, Austrian, Belgian, Croatian, French, Greek, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Luxembourg, Dutch, Portuguese, Czech, Romanian, UK, Slovakian and Swedish  parliaments called on European legislators to adopt the GDPR “by 2015”.

German Green MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht, vice chairman of the civil liberties committee at the European Parliament warned this week that failure to agree on the new security and data protection rules was “bad for democracy” as this left European citizens exposed...

January 3, 2015,  Consumer behaviour, Legal update  No comments

From Friday 2 January 2015, payday lenders are now required to be fairer and in many cases cheaper and have had lost the ability to inflict misery on their customers that struggle to pay.

As a result of the new rules introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that regulates the market, it’s estimated that more than 100 payday loan firms have been driven out of business – 30 have closed down and a further 70 have simply stopped offering these products, while 450 high-street payday loan shops have also closed according to media reports.

“The crackdown on the payday lending market comes not a moment too soon...

January 2, 2015,  Legal update, News  No comments

There are growing concerns among data protection experts that current safeguards in place for the collection and storage of fingerprints is deeply flawed and are likely to be in breach of the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation, expected to be approved in 2015.

At the convention of Chaos Computer Club, a computer hacker known as “Starbug” claims to have cloned the thumbprint of German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen simply by using a standard smartphone and other pictures taken of her when she spoke at a conference recently.

Fingerprint identification is a commonplace security measure...