Thousands of internet subscribers' personal details leaked

Privacy International has announced that it is planning legal action against a UK law firm for breaching the privacy of internet users after a security breach.



The information held by ACS:Law, a law firm that has been tracking internet users to pursue legal action for breach of copyright, includes vast amounts of information on thousands of internet users. While the full extent of this breach is not yet known, one report stated that among the stolen files is a single email containing the personal information of approximately 10,000 people assumed to have been involved in file-sharing of pornographic works, exposing their names, addresses, postcodes, and Internet protocol addresses. Other reports indicate that credit card details have also been made available.

According to Alexander Hanff, PI Advisor: "This data breach is likely to result in significant harm to tens of thousands of people in the form of fraud, identity theft and severe emotional distress."

"This firm collected this information by spying on internet users, and now it has placed thousands of innocent people at risk."

PI has briefed the Information Commissioner's Office and is preparing a complaint. PI is also accepting complaints directly from the public, and we urge anyone who is a victim of this breach to get in touch as soon as possible by emailing alex@privacy.org.

The leaks mainly involve customers of BT, Sky, Plusnet and BeThere(O2)
Customers of AOL, Talk-Talk and Tiscali are totally unaffected
The situation with Virgin is slightly more complicated as at one time they did hand over customer information to ACS:Law but have recently refused.

Update: At the time of writing BT/Plusnet have still not notified customers who are affected even though they have known about the security breech for two days now. Plusnet is desperately trying to distance itself from owners and masters BT by blaming the latter for the entire situation while maintaining the pretence of being a separate company.

The company involved have been panned for rather dubious practices. It's hard to have much sympathy for them.

One of the more disgusting practices was the sending of a 'Part 36 settlement letter' asking how payment was to be made. This looks and reads exactly like a county court judgement award and even bears the official stamp of the court but is in fact a blank form freely available from any legal stationers.

Another was telling people that as the internet account holder they were legally responsible for any use made of that account even though they knew full well that was not true.

I haven't looked into this for quite a while, but I don't think they have ever won a contested case have they? Do I also remember them being featured on Watchdog?

I haven't looked into this for quite a while, but I don't think they have ever won a contested case have they?

No case has ever actually been taken to court by ACS:Law. Their predecessors Davenport-Lyons 'claimed' to have taken four (uncontested) cases to court but no-one has ever seen any documentation to prove that.

Do I also remember them being featured on Watchdog?

Yes, both Davenport-Lyons and ACS:Law have featured in similar investigations in separate editions of the programme. They also featured in a couple of other BBC investigations into the subject.

Both Davenport-Lyons and ACS:Law are currently the subject of a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

Correction: I just read in one of Andrew Crossley's private emails that it was the "One Show" and not "Watchdog" which criticised his business practices

In another private email he also made some very unpleasant remarks about "Which?" magazine's chief legal advisor Deborah Prince who appeared on the programme describing her as "a disgrace to the legal profession"!

Please note: Sky and Plusnet were fully aware that the so-called 'evidence' against their broadband subscribers was very flimsy indeed. In spite of that they notified ACS:Law in advance that they had no objection to the granting of a court order which later 'compelled' them to release subscribers' personal information. This particular type of court order called a 'Norwich Pharmacal' is only ever suppposed to be used in criminal investigations and not for the kind of civil action which ACS:Law was engaged in.