If they're not losing it they're selling it...

What you mean you thought they wouldn't sell any and every bit of information they have on you for a small fee ?

Its all available people, from your weight, hospital records, Birth/marriage/death.

Local councils are doing just the same by selling people's info on the 'Edited Register'.

However, at least you can opt out of the Edited Register...

If they keep losing it the market for selling it will collapse as it will all be in the public domain anyway

They sell data that we legally have to give them, lose data that we have to give but they can't sell and charge for data we had to pay to be collected (think postcodes).

Why isn't there a "you're having a giraffe" icon?

Why do you think they are so worried about all the recent data losses, It's certainly not because we have a right to have our data kept securely and its not just cos they have made themselves look like idiots again, Its only money that worries them ;)

That's what registered keeper records are FOR. So people with reasonable cause can find out who owns the car.

We all need the ability to pursue our rights through the courts. Do you really want to be left with no option other than the rozzers?

You know, if you are hit by a hit and run driver, if people have been trespassing and you got the car number, if someone makes of without paying from a petrol station or a shop, or, yes, if someone parks on a private car park and buggers off without paying.

What IS a scandal is that they aren't auditing a large random sample of these requests to determine that they are legit, and to deter fraudulent requests.

Obtaining personal data fraudulently is an offence carrying a £5000 fine. Why no prosecutions?

No seriously, like someone else already said - I knew about the already scandalous sale of data from the electoral role - but why the f__k isn't this data covered by the data protection act.

You know, the act which when accidentally violated by government departments and other companies prevents them from helping you get the mistake sorted out?

It's not just a nice little earner for the government (which they can pass on to us in the form of lower taxes... hahaha, not really, public sector pay rises for all!) It also fits in neatly with rocketing fuel and car taxes, road pricing, excessive road signs, environmental scaremongering, etc, in getting rid of the car and the incredibly annoying personal freedom it provides, forcing people to either go where the government says they can go (on public transport routes) or stay where they've jolly well been put.

It's joined-up government thinking at its finest.

Black helicopter for the obvious reason... another decade of Labour and the only cars on the road will be black Ministerial ones as well.

Obviously people do not have a great deal of insight into how the UKs wonderful public and publicly funded services work.

Honestly, the things they do are zany partly supported by peer group support in one form or another.

I could go on but probably shouldn't :) NDAs and all that...

I don't know whether it's age or just weariness but I'm just not surprised by this.

This administration takes the prize for criminal behaviour and rank hypocrisy. For any Minister or secretary of state to harp on about the need to protect us citizens through the recent terrorism legislation and then blythely allow our personal details to be casually mislaid or even sold just about sums up the arrogant attitude politicians have towards the citizen.

And they actually wonder why we despise them so much.

Where's the opt out? How do you do it?

Would you like a UK website where for £6 per person (less in bulk) you can find (and then order from HMG) birth, marriage, or death certificates, with a database starting in 1837?

It's a reasonably well known and allegedly "legitimate" site which I refuse on principle to name here. If El Reg don't know who I mean and if they want to dig further and ideally run an article, El Reg have my details, and my rates are just as reasonable as El Reg's.

Using your mother's maiden name as a security keyword isn't very sensible, unless you use a word of your choice which *isn't* your mother's maiden name.

My experience with these parking companies concerned a supermarket carpark in London. Somehow, they got from DVLA that I was the keeper of the vehicle, and sent me a demand for money, which was formatted almost, but not quite, like the notices for a criminal fine arising from such things as parking on a double-yellow line.

That's dodgy enough for a start.

But the real fun was not only that I had sold the vehicle, two years before (and DVLA had not sent me the renewal/SORN notice, or followed up any lack of a reply, had such a notice gone missing in the post), but it was a John Deere combine harvester, about 10 feet wide without the header, and generally the sort of thing that you wouldb't be able to drive through London.

So I contacted the Police, because one of the options was somebody running around London on fake plates. And it chanced to be that the guy manning the desk at the Police Station was somebody I knew. So maybe I was told a little more than I should.

The Police know that DVLA data is unreliable, and when they access the records through the Police system they get all sorts of extra details.

So the parking company was told by the DVLA that I was the registered keeper, while the data the Police could access reported that the registration mark was, correctly, no longer in use.

And, being fair, the car park company did back down without any fuss. I suppose it helped that the data they had from, the DVLA included the manufacturer and model of the vehicle: "John Deere" is pretty distinctive.

Of course this is IT-relevant. Clearly, the DVLA system is so poorly designed and operated that they can't reconsile different sets of data for the same vehicle. There at least three different versions of the data, and they were selling the least accurate.

Remember, they hadn't hassled me over not filling in the annual payment (They could have tried fior a forty quid fine on that, if they thought I was still the keeper). They knew I wasn't the keeper of the vehicle any more. They knew the registration mark was no longer in use (I think the machine went to Cyprus), and they told the Police that. But they sold incorrect data.

I'm glad it was such a blatant cock-up. It's quite easy for two or three new vehicles to be registered with consecutively-numbered plates: you could be in a real mess with a white Ytansit van.

A private firm that is authorized to issue fines? Doesn't that put them in competition with the Government? One would not have thought there were sufficient incompetent fools available to staff both Government and private firms.

1. There is no correlation between the registered keeper of the vehicle and the owner in property law. If you're that scared about your info being sold after you park somewhere you oughtn't then get together with some mates, set up a legal entity and register all your vehicles to it. Privacy assured. Jesus...

2. Get over yourselves - yes, there are unscrupulous clampers and parking ticket issuing companies out there, just like there are unscrupulous lenders. You don't see people screaming "OMFG ban the banks!!!1!!!!!!"

If you own a shop with a bit of land for your customers to park on, and I being a cheap bastard park on it all day for free whilst I go to work you will be rather annoyed. Trouble is the police won't give a damn, so what are you going to do about it? You have no idea who I am, and the only way to identify me is my car reg. You might think about clamping my car yourself, but then I reckon I'll call the police and get you nicked for contravening the Private Security Industry Act. You can get anything up to 5 years in the clink for that (although I admit you'd *really* need to piss the judge off to get anything like that) Private parking has a very valid use (well, if it's well operated it does).

In short, if the DVLA give out your details don't complain - you had no reason to give them your name and home address in the first place. Do you register your domain names and leave your full personal details for all the world to see? If you park on someones private land without permission then be a man and take the consequences instead of whining like a 4 year old. And yes, yes - the rules DO apply to you. You are not special (in that sense anyway)

</rant>

Yes obviously this is against the 8 principles of the Data Protection Act but who gives a toss?

Well I do actually.

Not only is this action ILLEGAL but they sell it to those people who decide that it costs £60 to park for more than 2 hours on an otherwise empty car park. Tesco do this with their car parks as do B & Q. So for £2.50 they can now hit you with their parking fines.

If we all wrote to the DP(C) then he would be forced to investigate this.

Take a look at this folks it may help as a lot of the time they may actually be breaking the law.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/parking-traffic-offences/

Ps

Mr DVLA here's my £2.50 - how many jags is John Prescott driving these days ?

Two points:

How many of these supermarket 'parking fines' have gone to court? They're supposed to be civil contracts, a contract bound by a sign on the car park but how can that be if there is no exchange of money for the parking service? If they're contracts then why is the fee extracted by intimidating 'penalty charges', and bailiff visits rather than a lawsuit?

There is a perfectly valid penalty the supermarkets and McDonalds can instigate, and that is to refuse to serve someone badly parked.

Then there's the DVLA's involvement in this. They have a test, they disclose details to a bunch of cowboys based on that test, once disclosed those details can't be taken back, the cowboys can disclose and use the details without the test being applied. Yet the test is important?! Civil 'contracts' are not justification for releasing DVLA details. And at the very least they should hear THE OPPOSING VIEWPOINT before the disclosure. Ask the person why they think the claim is false and DVLA should not disclose their details!

Why not?

And how on earth did we get to companies dishing out penalties like this? Fake pseudo contracts for 'free' parking with fees collected by intimidation and government agency involvement???

I had a fine notice from an ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) controlled car park recently. The notice said I had parked without buying a ticket. The tone of the notice was extremely threatening. They had obtained my owner details by sending my registration to DVLA and buying my info. This is what constitutes "reasonable cause" to the DVLA. I was given no prior notification (IE, no ticket was put on my car), and wasn't given an option to "opt out" of this illegal selling of my data to a private third party.

There are strict DVLA guidelines which say prior notice SHOULD be given to the person whose data is to be requested, however these voluntary guidelines a routinely ignored, and the DVLA apparently are "powerless" to do anything about it.

Of course, I couldn't prove I'd bought a parking ticket, because by the time the fine notice was issued, three weeks after the alleged parking violation, I'd disposed of the ticket.

When I wrote an equally threatening letter back to the ticket issuers, it turned out that there was something wrong with their ANPR software (suprirse surprise!) - Yes, I HAD bought a parking ticket. they simply rolled over an rescinded the parking fine.

So I can testify that the system is being abused by those using it.

Let's try a couple of hypotheticals out.

1] I see a nice Bentley in a car park somewhere,think "here's somebody with a few quid" - For £5 I can get enough information from DVLA to steal the owner's identity.

2] I'm a violent abuser, who wants to locate my ex-girlfriend who has taken out a restraining order on me. Simple, Just give my ex-girlfriend' reg to DVLA, and they'll tell me where she's living.

ID cards Mr Brown? If you can't keep my address safe, there's no way you're getting my DNA.

As a South African, having not lived in the UK (with UK driver's license) for very long, I too am very shocked that they are allowed to sell the data to private companies. Why were anyone even angry when they lost drivers' data then, because it may end up in the wrong hands? Is it then impossible for the private companies to sell the data they been sold by the DVLA to the wrong people anyway?. So what's the difference between losing the data and selling it to a private company that might (illegaly or not) sell it on to some shady operation.

Typical the rules never apply to the rulemaker does it?

So THAT'S what the Loch Ness Monster was doing with Chef's parents....

Some very short sighted indigant people posting on this.

If it were the case that the parking companies couldn't get this information then instead of a 'fine' through the post you'd find your car clamped and someone demanding money before the clamp was removed.

There are legitimate reasons for the DVLA to give out this information, these being when you park on private property with no permission.

There doesn't need to be an express contract formed for this to happen. If the supermarket has a sign up saying that parking is for customers only and you park there and go elsewhere then you are parked in breach of the implied contract. They have every right to seek recompense from you and the easiest and most sensible method is to find out who owns the car and send you a bill.

If there's a mistake and you weren't really parked there then refuse to pay and they'll have to prove it in court to enforce any charge.

Last time I checked you could pitch up to the Magistrates Court with your evidence, get a summons, and do the prosecution yourself. There is no need to get the rozzers involved.

I repeat, it would be a bad thing if the police were your only option, although it looks like the country is going that way.

You should be able to give a forwarding address, like your solicitor or bank though, provided you are prepared to accept legal service there.

...everyone has a unique numberplate, which goes on all the cars you own. So, if you have 7 Ferraris, they all have the same plate - yours. Your details also appear in an annually-published book about ALL Swiss driver details - so if anyone cuts you up, you can easily take their number, look it up in the book, and deal with them directly - without involving the police or DVLA.

The idea that you should be anonymous just because you drive a car is moronic. There are too many inconsiderate drivers around - and at least here in Switzerland, the knowledge of how easy it is to look someone up in "The Book", keeps people from behaving badly on the roads. If you don't do anything worthy of note, there's no reason to ever look you up. And that's a truly democratic choice, by the way; Switzerland's style of government makes the UK look like a dictatorship, by comparison.

If the DVLA (Government Dept.) are allowed to sell these details, what is to stop the dept owning the national ID database (when it exists) doing exactly the same!! Maybe they'll just charge a bit more for the details.

Makes a bit of a mockery of all the security alledged put in place around these systems!!

...the Data Protection Act surely?