Private investigators prosecuted by the Data Protection Commissioner

Aug 18, 2014 07:02 GMT  ·  By

A journalistic investigation discovered that credit unions in Ireland contracted the services of private investigators to retrieve personal information about their customers.

Also known as tracing agents, the private investigators resorted to false identities to obtain the private details from state entities, Department of Social Protection being among them.

According to the Irish Independent, who conducted the investigation, the names of no less than 468 customers owing money to credit unions have been examined by the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner with the Department of Social Protection, in order to find out if personal details about them have been revealed to third-party individuals.

The newspaper says that the information consists in addresses and social welfare information, which was provided to the credit unions in exchange for a fee.

It appears that the officials that disclosed the details to the private investigators were not trafficking the information and claim that they fell victim to the P.I.’s deceit.

At the moment, it is certain that sensitive data of 78 credit union customers has already been passed to the trace agents, and possibly reached the representatives of the credit unions that hired them.

The investigators did not use any technological means to extract the data, but relied on social engineering to have the files handed to them by the employees of the Department of Social Protection.

At the moment, prosecution preparations of the tracing agents by the Data Protection Commissioner have started, because obtaining personal data without authorization is a criminal offence, as per the Data Protection Acts.