6. Your rights

Under the sixth Data Protection principle, data subjects have the right to:

- see data held on themselves. They must apply in writing and pay a small fee (often around £10). The company must respond to the request within forty days.

- have any errors corrected

- claim compensation for any distress caused if the Act has been broken

- prevent processing likely to cause damage or distress

- prevent processing for automated decision taking by writing to the data controller to inform them that no decisions should be taken based on automatic processing. Some banks decide whether a customer should be given a mortgage on the basis of a computer program. The data subject has the right to prevent that happening.