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UK's Largest Online Pharmacy Sold Patients' Personal Data To Fraudsters (ibtimes.co.uk)

Posted by timothy on from the we-thought-they-were-your-friends dept.

Ewan Palmer writes: The UK's biggest online pharmacy has been fined $200,000 for selling thousands of patients' personal data to scammers who targeted the sick and vulnerable. Pharmacy2U (P2U) was found to have breached the Data Protection Act for giving away details of patients to Australian Lottery fraudsters who targeted male pensioners and health supplements company that has been cautioned for misleading advertising. A company who dealt with patients who were being marketed said they had 'no idea the trade in their data was as murky as this'.

2 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Privacy = $9.52 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    So the article says these folks sold about 21K of their customers' records and were fined $ 200K.

    Am I mistaken or this means that each customer's privacy's worth a little under $10.00?

  2. Re:if you can't protect it, don't collect it by mcpheat · · Score: 3, Informative

    What has this got to do with the NHS? You know that most pharmacies in the UK (and always have been) private businesses, right?

    20% of P2U is owned by EMIS and the CEO of EMIS is a director of P2U.

    EMIS provide the Electronic patient record systems for over half of the NHS in England