2. Introduction

The development of new technology has meant that many organisations store and process personal details on computer. 

This may be data on customers, employees, suppliers, competitors, etc.  This has worried many people whose main concerns are:

Who will be able to access this data?  Will information about me be available over the Internet, and therefore vulnerable to hackers?  Can my records be sold on to someone else?

Is the data accurate? If it is stored, processed and transmitted by computer, who will check that it is accurate? People often think it must be true if 'it says so on the computer'.

Will the data be sold on to another company? For example, could my health records be sold to a company where I have applied for a job? Could my personal details, collected by my employer, be used by a commercial company for targeting junk mail?

Will data about me be stored even if it is not needed? If the original reason for having the data has passed, can the data still be kept?

There was an earlier Data Protection Act in 1984 which set out to address some of these problems.  However, technology had moved on, and it was found that many things were no longer covered by this Act.  Therefore, in 1998, an updated version was passed.