I just couldn't concentrate on the train yesterday traveling to London for an IT faculty committee meeting because of all the mobile phones constantly going off - where do they get those tunes from - so I thought I would carry out a quick data privacy test. Within 2 minutes I had googled two callers, established their identities (turned out that one was the business development partner in a large accountancy practice and the other was a NXD for a pensions business). Full details of home and business addresses were obtained along with various news reports etc. The partner gave out their home address (since the electrician needed to mend the security gates which weren't working but no-one would be at home for the next two days ..... I could have texted there and then to my favourite local burglar and given him the info) and the NXD disclosed some pertinent (possibly sensitive information about their business).After the faculty meeting we got talking about IT Security and the various technical tools and techniques available but I'm afraid that they all fell down due to that one lowest common denominator - people!
So much is freely given away without thought or concern that I wonder why we bother with Personal Data Laws?