Parenting club illegally shared personal data of 14m people

A PREGNANCY and parenting club has been fined £400,000 for illegally sharing personal information belonging to more than 14 million people.

The investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found that Bounty collected data for the purpose of membership registration through its website and mobile app, merchandise pack claim cards and directly from new mothers at hospital bedsides.

The personal information shared was not only of potentially vulnerable new mothers or mothers-to-be but also of very young children, including the birth date and gender of a child.

Bounty breached the Data Protection Act 1998 by sharing 34.4million records between June 2017 and April 2018 with credit reference and marketing agencies without being fully clear with people that it might do so.

It comes after The Sunday Telegraph highlighted complaints from new parents that hospitals were failing to protect them from salespeople pressuring them to accept promotional products and hand over personal information.

Steve Eckersley, ICO’S director of investigations, said the case was “unprecedented”, adding: “Bounty was not open or transparent to the millions of people that their personal data may be passed on to such large number of organisations. Any consent given by these people was clearly not informed. Bounty’s actions appear to have been motivated by financial gain.”

Jim Kelleher, Bounty’s managing director, said: “In the past we did not take a broad enough view of our responsibilities and as a result our data-sharing processes, specifically with regards to transparency, were not robust enough. This was not of the standard expected of us. However, the ICO has recognised that these are historical issues.

“Our priority is to continue to provide a valuable service for new parents that is both helpful and trusted.”