Data Breaches

[Fr0g]

I received an invitation to join a slack group earlier today from a member of a college course that is coming to an end . I am not averse to staying in touch, but I am furious that my email has been distributed, presumably by the tutor, when I have not given permission. It is not within the college's policy.
Was still irritated about that - then an email popped up from a fellow choir member. Again, choir organisers have my details for admin purposes, not to share with an 80 strong choir.
I'm tempted to report both organisations the Information Commissioners' Office - the choir is a smallish organisation, but college is quite large, so should be fully informed about GDPR.

In the first instance contact the organisations in question to point out you have never given permission for your data to be used in this way.

YANBU to be unhappy your personal data has been used this way. You can report to the ICO but In reality they will expect you to raise it with the groups first. Write a complaint addressed to the data protection officer, they won’t necessarily have one but it should get someone’s attention.

Yanbu, this is why I use a Protonmail address for this kind of group and social media. People really should know better by now.

thanks all, agree it would be more rational to go through the organisations first. calmed down a bit after a glass of shiraz!

i hadnt heard of Protonmail - just had a quick google and will investigate that further @Inebriati

While I understand your ire at the unexpected use of your email address, You do need to be a little careful in your assumptions and aspersions.

Slack : if this is a group for keeping alumni talking together, then there is a very high likelihood that one of your fellow students did the inviting. College's don't tend to set these things up and are unlikely to have shared all your email addresses with one of the course members. Incidentally Band.us is better for that kind of group than slack.

Choir emails : are you sure that you haven't shared your email address with this friend in the choir? Was it a choir related email? Was it a personal email? Small organisations tend to be poor at remembering to blind copy their members or use a mailing tool to contact all members. This is bad form, but not usually done through malice. Your fellow choir member could have picked up the emails from.one of those instances. If they did and it was a generic email and it wasn't with choir admin permission then this is really very rude and inappropriate.

Please don't jump to the conclusion that it is the organisation's doing without being very sure. Having had a rant, please do go and have a quiet, calm word with the class tutor and the admin for the choir and ask them if they know anything about it before complaining to data protection officers and ICO. If it was an individual rather than the organisations, again have a quiet, calm word with them about the appropriateness of their action. The slack invite will likely have been out of the best of intentions, but without thinking to check first.