News

Fingerprint technology is unsafe as a security measure claims leading cyber crime and compliance expert

January 2, 2015, Categories 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...

Cowboy marketers face record fines in the New Year

December 30, 2014, Categories Essential Law for Marketers, News No comments

Current law

Under EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), organisations and companies are prohibited from transmitting or instigating the transmission of unsolicited electronic communications to consumers for the purposes of direct marketing unless the person receiving those communications has provided prior consent for the messages to be sent.

Companies also mustn’t disguise or conceal their identity in the messages or use invalid addresses where recipients of the messages would send responses to ask for the messages to stop being sent.

Marketers can send direct marketing via electronic mail to consumers if they have “obtained the contact details of th...

Google hit with threat of massive fine by Dutch Regulator for data breach

December 17, 2014, Categories Legal update, News No comments

As reported in the Financial Times (London, 15 December 2015), Google faces its largest ever fine from a European regulator after the Dutch Data Protection Agency threatened Google with a €15m fine over the way its stores personal data.

The Dutch Regulator demanded that Google asks users for “unambiguous consent” before it can share their personal details between its services, such as Google Maps and YouTube, the video-sharing site.

It also mandated that the company clarify its privacy policy so users know which bits of personal data are used by its different services.

The ruling comes in the wake of the meeting of Council of Ministers that are looking at ways of makin...

Sony try to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted. It may not work.

December 17, 2014, Categories Legal update, News No comments

Sony Picture Tri_Star_pictures_flying_horse s Entertainment (SPE) has warned media owners they could face legal action for substantial damages if they report the contents of stolen documents that were leaked online following a cyber-attack on Sony in November 2014.

In a blunt letter written by a top US law firm, SPE has requested media organisations including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and The Hollywood Reporter to destroy “stolen information” which includes documents, personal data and emails that’s sensitive data that is now presumed to be in the public domain.

In a thinly veiled threat, the letter warned: “If you don’t comply with this request and the stolen informa...

FREE SEMINAR – JANUARY 2015

December 16, 2014, Categories Events, News No comments

Many organisations are now very concerned about the likely impact of the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation. This new legislation represents the first major overhaul of data protection legislation since the 90’s and is a response to the significant privacy issues arising from the rapid developments in data management, cloud hosting and social networking.

The new rules will require ALL companies – big and small – to manage data access and privacy with greater stringency, carrying very significant penalties for failing to do so. This new data requirement affects every financial services company in all EU Member States...

Unlocking the power of direct marketing under the new EU Regulation

December 16, 2014, Categories Guru in a Bottle, Legal update, News No comments

At a meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs, part of the EU Council of Ministers that took place on 4-5 December 2014, the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation took a further step to becoming adopted across all 28 EU Member States.

The meeting, attended by Chris Grayling, Lord Chancellor and Teresa May, Home Secretary and chaired by Andrea Orlando, Italian Minister of Justice and President of the Council marks a tipping point in the harmonization of data protection laws across all 28 EU Member States.

At that meeting, the EU Council of Ministers gained partial consensus on two important and inter-related points with respect to data security and protection that ...

National ad campaign in India urges Parsis to get married and have kids!

November 18, 2014, Categories Brand marketing, News No comments

Back in 1989 I joined the BBC in London and was very fortunate to have met my beautiful wife Fenella who then worked as the executive assistant to the Head of BBC World Service Training.

I often tell friends that joining the BBC was the best thing I ever did in my life and I was incredibly lucky to have found someone as wonderful as Fenella who also turned out to be a Parsi! With a small community of around 5,000 in the UK and just 80,000 globally, the odds-on meeting the girl of my dreams who was also Parsi was not high, to say the least!

Years later, when I entered the PR agency world, it appeared that my impending marriage became a national news story here in the UK!

So it...

Smoking products back on TV advertising in UK

October 17, 2014, Categories Brand marketing, Essential Law for Marketers, News No comments

Last week the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) announced relaxed regulations for advertising e-cigarettes through television broadcasting.

From November 2014, e-cig brand owners (these tend to be the big tobacco manufacturers) will be able to use TV advertising having previously been banned from doing so.

The introduction of the new rules has largely been welcomed with many finding previous rules unclear and inconsistent.

Ant-tobacco charity Ash declared it was satisfied with this move as such products are deemed to be nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) but the science on whether such strategies actually lead to a significant decrease in the number of smokers is still ...

The future internet of things

October 13, 2014, Categories Guru in a Bottle, News No comments

This month marks 25 years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee developed the draft of a proposal for we now know as the World Wide Web.

In fact, it’s hard for many of us to imagine how we ever did our school homework – or anything for that matter – without it! Of course the world is a very different place to the one Tim Berners-Lee lived in 1989, the year I joined the BBC in news and current affairs.

Today, Tim Berners-Lee has called for greater for privacy on the web and for people to become the legal owners of their data in order to control when and how it’s used because of rampant identity theft and the invasion of personal and sensitive data that’s now a daily occurrence around ...