To wonder if this is a GDPR breach?

[House21709]

I'm posting here for traffic hoping that someone understands GDPR and any implications more than I do.

We are buying a house, have a mortgage offer and have just started the legal process. The conveyancer has sent out a big letter full of ID and money stuff and has also included a form which lists the name, current address, new home, purchase price and e-mail address of someone completely different buying a different property.

Is this a GDPR breach and if so, should I be worried? Is there anything I should do i.e. should we tell the conveyancer who sent it, or even look at changing conveyancers or is this fairly common?

You notify the person who sent it to you. They then report it as a breach.

Sounds like they have made a mistake so I'd let them know and have them retrieve the documents asap. They've made an error, and disclosed someone elses details. I doubt it's common, but it's human error I would imagine. And no not common I would hope!

Yes it's a breach and yes fairly common. Report to them. I wouldn't find a new one just for this but would keep an eye out for other warning signs they are a bit shit.

Just to clarify I meant breaches and mistakes generally are common, not conveyancers sending round people's info!

It’s not a GDPR issue it’s a data protection issue and would still have been an issue before the GDPR legislation.

The DP in GDPR literally stands for Data Protection, zofanjo. It is a breach of current regulation, OP, yes and would also have been a breach under the previous regulations set out in the Data Protection Act.

You can have a chat with the ICO if you want to take it further

ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

Too easily done. A bit of paper caught under your documents maybe?

My role at work involves data protection - and this is another thing to remind people to be careful of when they send things out to people. Along with ensuring the name is correct, the address is correct, they're using BCC, they're speaking to the right people etc etc.

They then report it as a breach

They don't have to report it. All depends on whether they think it's serious enough to report. They have to record the incident and the decision they took - along with what they did about the incident.

Thanks for the clarifications.

It was a form we needed to complete pre-populated with this other person's personal and property details and was stapled into the middle of the other forms we need to complete so I am wondering whether our correct form has gone off to the other person in the middle of their documents.

I suppose it's easily done. It has just made me a bit wary what else they could get wrong, as this should be very easy to double-check. I thought conveyancers would be very detail-oriented.