Personal Data

Right to Request Deletion of Personal Data

One of today’s major news articles discusses proposed changes to the much-maligned Data Protection Act. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40826062

Here in Great Western Land, organisations that we deal with such as the utilities, on-line sellers, suicide prevention charities tec. like to keep records about us. These records can contain sensitive information such as name, address, age, bank details, waistline, make of car and the such like.

The thing is that this data can be used by maggots on the dark web to steal your identity, rob you blind and generally poke fun. This means that said organisations are duty bound to hold your data safely and not let themselves get hacked or leak data out to the world wide interwebnet.

Some well-known names have been caught – pants down and everything… http://www.techworld.com/security/uks-most-infamous-data-breaches-3604586/

Setting aside the potential damage the unawares face when that phone call from Microsoft lands or the big friendly yet heavily accented call from your bank there are problems with the quality of the data that said organisations continue to hold.

The problem with out of date personal data

It is hard to conjure up the image of someone calling a price comparison website to tell them that their email address has changed or that indeed, they have moved. Who is going to call up an instant loan website and say “by the way I’ve lost my job so can’t pay back my loan that has a measly 1,100% APR”.

On the other hand, organisations may have to accept that they may well be sending spam emails to a newly unused email address, much the same as junk mail gets through one’s letterbox and ends up straight in the recycling bin, rabbit run or the bottom of your parrot’s cage.

What though about sites that share information, sites that as much as we don’t want to we have to use. Consider your dreaded car insurance renewal. What if one insurance company detects your unemployment or change in age/employment status/marital status/gender. Then they all know about it and your premium goes up through the roof because they have an excuse to up your premium.

Park that thought for a minute and consider. . . .

Effect of increase in “Wet Bulb” temperatures

Most official weather stations around the world measure temperature with two thermometers.

The first, or “dry bulb” instrument, records the temperature of the air. The other, or “wet bulb” thermometer, measures relative humidity in the air and the results are normally lower than just the pure air temperature.

For humans, this wet bulb reading is critically important.

While the normal temperature inside our bodies is 37C, our skin is usually at 35C. This temperature difference allows us to dissipate our own metabolic heat by sweating.

However, if wet bulb temperatures in our environment are at 35C or greater, our ability to lose heat declines rapidly and even the fittest of people would die in around six hours.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40793019

Of course, in the future when this scenario arises people will have managed to transfer their consciousnesses into the interwebnet. All of a sudden then, these said organisations may well be holding copies of the person, not just their date of upload, address (presumably a hard drive), gender and so on.

What then for data security, can you imagine yourself leaking into the dark web but be sold on by virtual slave traders. . . A film plot in the making… oh wait.. TRON.

Right to request Deletion of Person

One of the many illogical conclusions to this then is that the data protection act really ought to consider the nature of the data being protected and/or deleted by request.

Should the data to be deleted be an uploaded consciousness then does this amount to assisted suicide?

Lets go and find the proverbial can of worms and open it….

You heard it here on this blog first!