Sensitive information - sent in error

skinnymallink

What would you do if you received an email with a lot of sensitive information from a large company?????????

skinnymallink

sent in error of course!

Blowfish

What kind of sensitive? If it's personal info, you could talk to the Data Protection Commission. If it's company sensitive info, just talk to the company themselves.

Bacchus

Just respond to them to make them aware of the error. If there's contact details of the person/company who's privacy has been breached, cc them on the email. Then delete the email they sent you. Done, not your problem.

I regularly get emails sent me due to me having a firstnamelastname@gmail.com address and people mistakenly enter the address with a dot in it, or drop some number at the end, and it ends up in my inbox.... regularly. Four primary sources... one from Dublin, one in London, one in Sydney, and one in Texas. There's a new guy now too (also in Dublin) who I've been getting a couple of emails about. Good luck with the interview mate!

I managed to get in touch with the first Dublin guy and I no longer receive CV's for a bar position he advertises every now and then, which is great. I still get the odd random email though.

Haven't heard from London guy at all since I threatened the estate agent and bank that I'd write a letter to the person (his email wasn't on any of the documents they sent me) if they didn't stop sending me details of a property he was buying.

I've a ton of tickets to Sydney wildlife park from the other guy... and various other family trips around Australia.

The Texas one is mostly about some religious meetups between some people from Mexico and Texas. I told them ages ago they had the wrong address... they keep on sending me the emails.

theyoungchap

I would report it to the Data Protection Commissioner....it is not worth the risk of not doing so.

liamo

Without doubt, should you receive such an email you should tell the company that sent the information. They would need to know what happened so that they can address it and prevent it from happening again.

Depending on the information in the email, it may or may not be covered by European data protection laws. (That is, it may be from a non-EU company and the data may be related to non-EU data subjects.)

If the company and/or the data is subject to EU data protection laws then the company would be obliged to report this as a data breach to their relevant Supervisory Authority.

Whether you should also report this to the Data Protection Commissioner (or other relevant Supervisory Authority) would be entirely up to you. There would be no obligation on you as the recipient of the data to make a report.

It would also be prudent (and responsible) of you to delete the data that you received.

IamMetaldave

I have the same issue - firstnamesurname@gmail.com and am forever getting emails/invoices that don’t belong to me. One particular one had something to do with the cost of a very popular pop stars concert costs in American. I always respond and let them know.. but they keep coming.. one guy sends them every single month still.. it’s amazing how little some folks care.

mirrorwall14

Ive gotten two from a TD, one including personal info. Apology was profuse from them. I’m also on the mailing list for some Swedish ladies football team. I’ve tried to use google translate to form a ‘remove me from this list’ but to no avail. Every few months I seem to land back on the list

Victor

IamMetaldave wrote: »

I have the same issue - firstnamesurname@gmail.com and am forever getting emails/invoices that don’t belong to me. One particular one had something to do with the cost of a very popular pop stars concert costs in American. I always respond and let them know.. but they keep coming.. one guy sends them every single month still.. it’s amazing how little some folks care.

This is a scam. Don't respond - it just proves they have a valid email address to send more spam to.

IamMetaldave

Victor wrote: »

IamMetaldave wrote: »

I have the same issue - firstnamesurname@gmail.com and am forever getting emails/invoices that don’t belong to me. One particular one had something to do with the cost of a very popular pop stars concert costs in American. I always respond and let them know.. but they keep coming.. one guy sends them every single month still.. it’s amazing how little some folks care.

This is a scam. Don't respond - it just proves they have a valid email address to send more spam to.

Nah, the dude is down in Bray. I went down to him as it was so frequent. It’s just the height of laziness in his part not to fix it!