A record number of complaints were made to the Data Protection Commissioner last year, according to his latest annual report. Paul Cullen, Consumer Affairs Correspondent, reports.
Some 658 complaints were received last year, compared to 300 in 2005, the commissioner, Billy Hawkes, said yesterday. Complaints about cold calling and unsolicited text messages accounted for much of the increase.
Mr Hawkes said his officials were "closing in" on companies that were "misbehaving" in the premium text message sector and he was confident that the number of complaints would soon drop.
While fines of up to €100,000 can be imposed for breaches of data protection laws, the commissioner said his focus was on correcting behaviour.
There were no prosecutions last year and only one in 2005.
Almost 40 per cent of complaints related to breaches of phone privacy, including cold calling and unsolicited text messages, while 28 per cent related to access rights for information.
Two out of three complaints were upheld and over one-quarter were rejected.
The backlog of complaints, meanwhile, has grown from 90 in 2005 to 213 last year.
Mr Hawkes said investigations had established that at least one major insurance company had wrongly obtained personal information about people through the use of private investigators.
However, there did not appear to be any systematic attempt by the industry to obtain information in this way.
While most of the eight inspections of companies and State organisations revealed a reasonably good compliance with data protection principles, one inspection identified the "casual and persistent" exchange of e-mails disclosing personal client information between a leading mortgage brokerage and an estate agent.
Evidence of systemic privacy breaches was uncovered where the purchase loan amount and the name of the buyer was passed, without the consent of the customer, to estate agents who had introduced leads to brokers.
As a result of this investigation, Mr Hawkes said, new guidance was issued to all 1,633 mortgage intermediaries registered with the Financial Regulator.
He said a balance was needed between the demands of security, crime prevention and legitimate commercial interests to access data on the one hand and the individual's right to privacy on the other.
People's "private space" was being eroded, gradually and almost imperceptibly, by State and private sector activity.
Mr Hawkes described the decentralisation of his office to Portarlington, which was completed last December, as a complete success.
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"Annie Wun" has her movements tracked by CCTV, while her international bank transactions are, unknown to her, accessed by the US government. Her purchase of hazardous cleaning materials, a search for library books on building self-esteem called "Male and Female Chemistry" and "Love Bomb People" and a web search for information on plastic surgery could look suspicious when viewed in a certain way.