Some more legal stuff – Data Protection
Posted by aegb on April 16, 2008
If you are to be a business on the internet that sells a product, depending on what sort of information about your customer you collect, you may need to have a data protection license and then again you may not.
Your customers or at least some of them will be wary about what information they want to offer you, some may not want to offer a telephone number, others will be insistant that you do not email them under any circumstances – not always easy is your website automatically sends them an email to tell them that their order has been dispatched.
The real issues are that many people simply do not want spam, they are concerned that you may use their information for other purposes. Now, whilst for basic information offered such as name, address and telephone number does not require a Data Protection License it is best to phone the Data protection people up and ask. A license is £35 and not a great deal of money. Adding the fact that you have a Data Protection Licence in your information pages on your website may go a long way to reassure some customers that you are a legal and safe site.
The telephone number to contact the Data protection people is 01625 545745 You can telephone and ask for an information pack, this way you will know if you need the license or not but for £35 it is quite a worthy bit of paper i think because there is no doubt, you will get very suspicious customers.
Holistic Feathers said
That is really interesting … I didn’t realise it was only £35 to obtain a licence. I think its a very grey area, so many people blithely carry on collecting data from clients/customers and store them on their PC (that’s the critical factor!) without a licence.
I must get my DP stuff out and revisit it. Thank you so much for raising this point – and for letting us know just how cheap it is!
aegb said
The booklet “Notification exemptions” A self assesment guid helps you to decide if you need to have the licence or not.
And i agree, it is a very grey area, whilst i am told that for my business i would not need the licence, for the sake of £35 i think it is worth having. The booklet leads you through a set of questions but the final bit of information isn’t all togethert clear. They person i spoke to at data protection didn’t think that i needed the license.
I think i will get one anyway.