ICO raps UK Student Loans Co for leaking MEDICAL files and more The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has criticised Blighty's Student Loans Company for handing students' medical reports and other private files over to the wrong people. In various blunders, records including medical notes and a psychological assessment were accidentally leaked to an unnamed outside organisation, sent …
Why does the Student Loans company even have or keep medical records??
Okay, so you might say they need them to weigh up risk when lending for such long periods, but a) I thought everyone qualified for a loan so long as you meet certain (non-medical related) requirements, and b) why do they need to keep them once you're approved?
Once published, the article should be static except for spelling corrections ofc. Error correction should be via a strikethrough, so any comments made don't suddenly look weird as the part they were commenting about is suddenly missing.
Its not print, but it is press.
"so any comments made don't suddenly look weird"
Better: email corrections@theregister with reports of typos, grammatical errors, inaccuracies and unclear wording - then we can fix the problem immediately rather than read every single comment. We get those emails straight away.
Also: articles are more or less static once published, but in the same way newspapers produced 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions for each daily issue, there may be, if necessary, some tweaking soon after publication – mainly to insert bootnotes, run a better headline, add extra detail, clarify things, etc.
Substantial updates, or new developments, are flagged up as such, and it's policy to leave archived stories as-is. But having left the newsprint world and embraced the web, I cannot fathom why you'd not want to take advantage of instant publishing to make articles as fresh and clean as possible.
C.
"But having left the newsprint world and embraced the web, I cannot fathom why you'd not want to take advantage of instant publishing to make articles as fresh and clean as possible."
Because the article is a record of what The Register reported. If you modify the article after publication without indicating those modifications in some way then any quotations from or references to it gain the appearance of being inaccurate. The only way to prove otherwise is to hope some third-party has archived the article in its original state.
As someone who has had to deal with with these numpties (two children who have been through degrees and one now working overseas) I'm not in the slightest surprised that they they can't keep confidential data under control. They can't even find information you've already given them.
Plus the fact they are very keen to send out letters from what appears to be the Smith Lawson & Company debt collection company but is actually part of SLC.
They're a monopoly why isn't there a choice?
Why oh why can't the ICO grow a set of balls and start issuing deterrent level fines?
Better still, lobby the government to change the law such that a company executive must be legally resposible for data privacy. This will allow serious breaches to result in bans from holding further directorships for a period of say 10 years.
Seriously, we'd be better off without these clowns. All they're doing is providing a cloak of legitimacy to the inept, and queering the pitch regarding individuals being allowed to sue for breaches of the act.
Softly softly is fuck all oftly.
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