When are you eligible for data breach compensation?

Under the DPA and GDPR, you are entitled to file a data breach claim for up to £2,000 or more in compensation if: Your personal data has been leaked, disclosed, corrupted, hacked, mis-used, or lost The breach was deliberate or due to negligence The breach occurred within less than six years You have not suffered economic loss; you can still claim for the emotional impact the breach has had in your life The company has offered you a free credit monitoring or anything similar

What Compensation Could A Data Breach Solicitor Claim On My Behalf?

A data breach solicitor will work on your behalf to secure the maximum GDPR breach compensation to which you are entitled. This would include not only compensation for any financial losses, but also due to any distress caused by the data breach. Examples of financial impact might include losses incurred as a result of cybercriminals applying for credit cards or setting up fraudulent bank accounts using your stolen data or even gaining access to your own existing bank accounts. Even if the breach has not led to any specific financial loss to you, you are still entitled to claim compensation for the distress, worry and inconvenience resulting from the data breach.

How do I know if I have a valid data breach claim?

An organisation is required under GDPR to inform you if they have breached your personal data in any way, and typically the first you might hear about it would be an email from the company concerned. Despite this, you may not know about a data breach by a particular company until you hear that they have been fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office ICO. When you contact us, we’ll get in touch with the company in question and use any information available from the ICO to establish whether your data has been breached.

Can I still claim even though I’ve suffered no financial losses as a result of the data breach?

It’s not just financial losses that are taken into consideration when it comes to data breach compensation. If an organisation has failed to securely store your data, your data breach solicitor can claim for any distress that has been caused to you as a result of the data breach.

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The biggest data breachesData breaches have been increasing both in terms of number and the amount of people affected. Many big companies have been affected resulting in some very large scale breaches and compensation pay outs.

Click a company to view more information about their breaches

Ticketmaster

£4,000+ Typical claim value
Number of records compromised

40,000
Date

Between February and June 2018

What happened?

A hack occurred in which the personal and financial details of Ticketmaster customers were stolen by cyber criminals. The information stolen by the hackers was all information that, in the wrong hands, could be misused for fraudulent purposes.

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Virqin media

£5,000 Typical claim value
Number of records compromised

900,000
Date

Between April 2019 – 28 February 2020

What happened?

A Virgin Media database containing the personal details of 900,000 people was left unsecured and accessible online for 10 months.

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EasyJet

£4,000+ Typical claim value
Number of records compromised

100,000+
Date

2020

What happened?

You could claim compensation worth thousands if your data was affected by the EasyJet hack that occurred in 2020.

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What Is a Data Breach?

A data breach is defined as the exposure of sensitive or confidential information to an unauthorised person, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

The person committing the breach can be a hacker, violating your private information for personal reasons or for the sake of a bigger entity. In some cases, the offender may not be a professional hacker at all, but rather just a grudging acquaintance of yours.

If a company that holds your data ends up giving it to an unauthorised party without your permission, this is also considered a data protection breach under GDPR.

As you can see, any one of us can be subjected to a GDPR breach. Thus, we must try our hardest to protect our information, starting by understanding why and how a data breach occurs in the first place.

What Is a Personal Data Breach?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) describes a personal data breach as a violation of secure or confidential personal information by an unauthorised party. The personal data may be lost, misused, stolen, or destroyed. This covers both accidental and deliberate breaches of data.

An example of a personal data breach is when an unauthorised third party like a hacker gains access to your data. Another data breach example is the loss of availability or alteration of your personal data without permission.

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Can I Make a Data Breach Compensation Claim?

Due to the high frequency of data breaches, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into place in 2018. The GDPR aims at protecting individuals and giving them control over their data in case a third party holds it. The third party here applies to social media platforms, online services, or offline retailer.

The GDPR’s laws state that you can make a data breach claim if you believe that your data has been breached. However, you must first attempt to reach an amicable agreement with the defendant, aka the third party, outside the court.

If the defendant declines your demand or you can’t settle things outside court, you have the right to take the matter to the court and make a legal claim. But bear in mind that you have to let the defendant know that you intend to take the claim to court for data breach compensation.

For the best chance at a data protection claim, it’s important to act fast, as there are strict time limits in place. Missing the deadline could mean forfeiting your right to claim.

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Data breach in figuresClaims on data breach incidents are happening every day

51%

Of consumers expect financial compensation if their information is lost or stolen
99%

Of UK citizens have had a data breach and can claim thousands of pounds in compensation

The UK has a population of nearly 70 million people
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88%

Of data breaches in the UK are said to be due to human error and warrant compensation

What Is a GDPR Data Breach Compensation Claim?

A data breach claim is a claim you can make against an individual, an entity, or a number of defendants. In the claim, you state the defendant to be a responsible party for the exposure of your sensitive information, demanding financial compensation for the damages.

The current law allows you to make a claim for the material damage of the breach, like losing money, and the non-material damage, like suffering from distress and anxiety.

If data protection law is breached, the GDPR gives you an opportunity to claim compensation from an organisation.

How Much Data Breach Compensation Can I Receive?

The amount of data breach compensation varies according to the type of the breach and the court judgment.

These are some of the typical GDPR breach compensation ranges:

£900 – £25,700

The lowest compensation goes for the mild breach of personal data, such as your name, date of birth, home address, and email address.

You get a bigger compensation for the breach of medical information, starting from £2,000 to £5,000. You can get from £3,000 to £8,600 if your financial information is breached, depending on the complications of the breach.

You can get from £8,600 to £25,700 for the more serious data protection breach cases that have led to serious consequences.

£25,700 – £42,900

If the data breach has caused any sort of physical or mental diseases, your compensation can amount to £42,900. However, in such cases, you must provide evidence for your medical condition and your financial losses.

It’s important to note that these estimates aren’t fixed; it’s left for the court to decide your exact compensation award. In some cases, the court may deny your demand for compensation if it sees that you’ve not provided enough evidence for your case. It might even order that you pay for the defendant’s costs in such a case.

This is why we always recommend that you seek advice from an independent legal entity.

How do you know if you are eligible for data breach compensation?

Under the DPA and GDPR, you are entitled to file a data breach claim for up to £2,000 or more in data breach compensation if:

Your personal data has been leaked, disclosed, corrupted, hacked, mis-used, or lost
The breach was deliberate or due to negligence
The breach occurred within less than six years
You have not suffered economic loss; you can still claim for the emotional impact the breach has had in your life
The company has offered you a free credit monitoring or anything similar

What do you need to show before making a claim for data breach?

For your claim to be successful you will need to demonstrate that the company that held your data failed to take all appropriate steps to ensure the safety and security of your data and that, as a result of their negligence, your data was released or made available to other, third parties or organisations without your consent. Any company that is holding your data has certain obligations with that data and a claim can be made if:

The breach could have happened as a result of the data being lost or hacked.
Released to a non-related party without your consent.
The information held by the company hadn’t been updated and the inaccuracy of this caused you damage. This could relate to financial details of your life for example.
Personal information had been used in an inappropriate manner.

What is the average compensation amount for breach of the Data Protection Act?

The average compensation for breaching the Data Protection Act is between £1,000 and £42,900. In some cases, you might be able to claim more compensation for a personal data breach that causes you significant emotional distress.

The following figures can be used as a rough guide to how much compensation you could receive as a result of different types of breaches.

Type of breach	Possible compensation amount
Breach of a person’s name, date of birth, home address, and email address	£1,000-£1,500
Breach of medical records	£2,000-£5,000
Breach of financial information	£3,000-£7,000
Breach that leads to an illness or depression (medical evidence would be needed to support this alongside evidence to show any other losses e.g., earnings)	£25,700-£42,900

How much have previous data breach claimants received in compensation?

The amount of money that data breach claimants have received in compensation has increased over the years. Initial breaches of the Data Protection Act typically only won about £2,500 in damages related to the disclosure of personal information. However, as companies have been collecting more private data, more cases have been going to court and leading to more precedents being set.

The majority of data breach claims are settled outside of court, but the amount of money that is agreed on is normally informed by cases that are similar in nature. Below are some data breach compensation examples.

Company	What happened?	Average claim amount
Easyjet	A cyber-attack on Easyjet’s IT systems allowed hackers to access personal data of 9 million customers	£2,000
118 118 Money	Customer call recordings in which personal details could have been discussed were targeted by hackers	£1,500
Blackbaud	Cyber-attack stole sensitive information at software giant Blackbaud that affected other companies linked to them including National Trust	£2,000-£3,000
Bounty	Disclosed personal data of pregnant women and mums to third parties for marketing purposes, almost 35 million pieces of data revealed	£1,000 – £2,000
Bristol City Council	An email error by council employee saw identities of hundreds of families with disabled children shared without their consent	£2,000-£3,000
British Airways	A hack occurred in which 420,000 customers personal and financial details were stolen	Up to £6,000
Claire’s Accessories	A hack via malicious code that obtained customer information during online checkout	£3,000 – £5,000
Dixons	A hack that saw over 10 million customer records accessed by malicious software on tills in stores	£1,500
Equifax	Cyber criminals accessed Equifax systems in USA and stole personal information of 146 million people worldwide	£1,000 – £2,000
Equinti	Hundreds of annual benefit statements for Sussex police officers were sent to wrong addresses	£1,000 – £2,000
Hockley Medical Practice	Medical data of thousands of patients accessed by hackers	£3,000
Lloyds Pharmacy	Private medical documents were accidentally delivered by a courier company to a home in Scotland	£1,500
LOQBOX	Hit by a cyber-attack that allowed hackers to access personal data and in some cases payment card data	£4,000
Marriott	Cyber-attack occurred in 2014 but wasn’t discovered until 2018 affected 7 million guest records in UK	£2,500
National Trust	Breach originated at Blackbaud, but National Trust fundraisers and volunteers were affected as personal data exposed	£2,000-£3,000
OnePlus	Information hacked through online store; personal data accessed by cyber criminals	£1,500 – £2,000
T-Mobile	Breach affected over 1.2 million of prepaid customers, hackers accessed personal information	£1,500 – £2,000
TeamSport	Accidental release of hundreds of personal and financial details of former employees to an individual	£4,000
Ticketmaster	40,000 customers personal and financial information stolen by cyber criminals	£5,000
Twitter	A bug inside Twitter led to the private tweets of 88,726 users being made public	£1,000
Virgin Media	An unsecured database meant personal information of existing and potential customers was accessed without permission	£5,000
Watford Community Housing	Error by staff member meant email was sent out with information about 3,545 tenants containing personal data	£2,000
Zoom	Targeted by a hack that led to around 500,000 user accounts appearing for sale on the dark web	£2,500

All compensation amounts are estimates/averages and are dependent on the degree to which the individual has been affected by the data breach.

What is a Data Leak?

Data leaks happen when an organisation provides confidential information to an untrusted recipient. This includes any form of unapproved transmission of data to an external party, electronically or physically.

This criminal act, however, isn’t always intentional. In fact, just under a fifth of all data leak cases happen by accident. Examples include sending confidential information to the wrong email address and mishandling a file containing private info and carelessly placing it.

What Are Some Examples of a Data Leak?

Essentially, any event that exposes private information in an unwanted or harmful way is considered a data leak. A few common examples are as follows:

Unintentionally sending private data to the wrong recipient.
Losing any electronic or physical item that contains private information, whether by loss or theft. These items can include laptops, smartphones, or even paper documents.
Fake malicious websites that ask the user to provide their account or financial information.
Malware, such as viruses or trojans, that are used to hack your device, therefore gaining access to personal information.
Electronically sending private data without any type of password protection and/or sending the password in the same email.
An employee forwarding company documents that contain sensitive information to their own email or downloading it on their device.

Has any of the following ever happened to you? Read carefully as we don't want you to miss out

Your data was lost, stolen or hacked
Your data was inaccurately stored or out-of-date
Your data was held longer than required
Your data was used outside of its stated purpose
Your data was made public
Your data was disclosed without your express permission
Your data was maliciously disclosed
Your data was used to obtain credit cards fraudulently

If any of the above apply to you, you should check for compensation online right away

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Frequently Asked Questions

What Can You Do If Your Data Protection Is Breached?

First, you’ll need to find out what kind of data has been affected, and what steps the organisation plans on taking to help you. If the association fails to repair the damage or to give you GDPR compensation for the damage done, then, you can reach out to Data Breach Claims.

Data Breach Claims will connect you with the kind of expertise the situation calls for. It’ll put you in contact with claims experts who will act as an intermediary between you and the company being claimed against.

You can also report your case to the ICO who will investigate the matter and potentially fine the organisation. If the organisation is found to have broken data protection laws, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) won’t give you compensation, but their findings will help the matter greatly.

What Are Data Protection Breaches and When Can I Claim it?

If your data is breached, that means that your personal information has been accessed, altered, lost, destroyed, or shared with an unauthorised person without your consent. It’s basically a failure of the system that is intended to protect. That could happen to individuals, companies, or even the government itself.

If you suffer any damage whether it’s material, or emotional because of a data protection breach, then you have a right to make a claim for data protection breach compensation.

Can I Make a Personal Data Breach Claim?

Suppose you’ve been victim to a security violation, meaning your personal information has been violated, copied, stolen, destroyed, or transmitted by an organisation. Then you have the right to claim personal data breach compensation for a breach.

How Can I Determine if My Personal Data Was Stolen?

If there’s a data breach affecting your personal information, an organisation is obligated to inform both you and the ICO.

The organisation should clarify in plain language:

Consequences of the said data breach.
Measures taken to handle the breach and its adverse effects.
Contact details of the officer in charge of data protection in the company.

If you think that your personal information has been violated due to a data breach but haven’t been notified by the organisation involved, contact them straight away.

When Do I Need to Notify about a Personal Data Breach?

Under the GDPR, notifications are generated when the breach of personal information is believed to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals. However, this process is optional and not mandatory. Therefore, not all data breaches need to be notified to the authorities.

What Information Must a Personal Data Breach Notification Have?

Under the GDPR, there are some points to be included in the notification. When reporting a personal data breach, you must describe the nature of the breach, including, if possible, the categories and the approximate number of data subjects and data records concerned.

What evidence can you provide to support your claim for distress?

When making a claim for data breach compensation for distress, it can be more difficult to demonstrate than proving a financial loss where you can show what has been taken from your account. If your experience of distress from a data breach is serious and you want to make a claim some evidence that could help your chances of it being successful include, medical evidence such as doctors appointments and medication prescribed for sleeping or to reduce anxiety, a written note from your doctor, documented time off work and sick pay, and any other documentation that could show the impact the breach has had in your life.

How likely is it that I’ll be able to claim for distress?

Data breaches have become more and more frequent as companies regularly hold personal data about you. Having that data breached can be highly stress inducing and you should be able to hold the organisation accountable and claim the money you deserve. Contact us today and we will put you in touch with specialist data breach solicitors who can help validate and pursue your GDPR compensation for distress.

My data has been breached, how can I prevent further damage?

Your initial action should be to protect the rest of your data to ensure no further data breach is made. The next step should be looking into how your data has been breached, then seeking help on your case for compensation.

Here are detailed steps you should take once you’re aware of the data breach.

Change all of your login information. Check your passwords/codes’ strength and activate multi-factor authentication options, such as verification codes or security questions.
Keep a record of any notifications you receive concerning a data breach and any correspondences made concerning that matter.
Find out exact details on what type of data has been breached and how.
Direct contact with the offender: It’s always advisable that you initiate making a compensation claim by attempting to sort it out with the offender organisation
Under no circumstances should you agree to sign any papers that urge you to forgo your rights as victims of the data breach.

I've suffered no financial losses as a result of the data breach, can I still make a claim?

If an organisation has failed to protect your data, you are entitled to claim compensation regardless of whether you have suffered any losses or not. We can make a claim on your behalf for anguish or anxiety caused by a data breach, but if you have suffered financial harm as a direct result of the breach, the amount of compensation you might be able to claim would likely be far greater.

How much will it cost me to make a data breach claim?

At Data Breach Claims we work on a No Win, No Fee basis. We only take on cases we believe we are able to win.

If your case is successful we will take a percentage of your compensation as our management fee or legal costs, if your case does happen to be unsuccessful, you pay nothing. This way there is absolutely no risk involved for you in making a data breach compensation claim.

Can a solicitor help confirm I was one of those affected by a data breach?

When you contact us, we’ll put you in touch with an expert data breach solicitor who will be able to contact the company in question and use any information you have provides plus that available from the ICO to establish whether your data has indeed been breached.

How Data Breach Claims Can Help You with Your Compensation Claim?

If you’re determined on going to court, you should have legal support. At Data Breach Claims, we’ll help you determine whether you have a strong case or not. If it’s a yes, our team will introduce you to the best and most suitable solicitors and claims management companies for you.

The experts will give you solid legal advice and help present your claim to the court to guarantee you get the compensation that truly makes up for the hardships you had to go through.

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