HfP and the new data protection rules

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

• Sandgrounder says:

  25 May25 May 04:52

  OT: Aols if already mentioned. I had a letter from Tesco Bank yesterday, reminding me that payments to ‘prepaid and virtual cards’ amongst other things will be charged at 3.99% from the 1st. I have the standard credit card. So I suppose it is no longer a sensible option for Revolut or Curve.

  • the real harry1 says:

    25 May25 May 06:39

    Apparently payments to Curve will still be treated as a purchase – the others get charged 3.99%.

    • New Card says:

      25 May25 May 07:00

      I assume this is on the credit and not the debit card?

      • Sandgrounder says:

        25 May25 May 07:02

        Yes, I have the standard credit card, the Premium and other legacy cards my be different.

    • Sandgrounder says:

      25 May25 May 07:00

      That is something, I shall re-add it to my Curve app.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        25 May25 May 09:20

        But pointless as it earns no points

  • Mr dee says:

    25 May25 May 07:25

    I believe they are referring to loading a card and storing the value ie prepaid or virtual neither of which Curve does.

    • Rob says:

      25 May25 May 08:21

      6540 is the offending MCC. For 2 days a while ago Curve transactions were accidentally processed with this, which is what triggered the Tesco letters.

• Phil Gollings says:

  25 May25 May 06:21

  HFP articles have started appearing on my Facebook timeline.
  I suppose that’s FB scanning my phone rather than HFP ?

  • Rob says:

    25 May25 May 08:27

    I am assuming you are following us on FB. We also occasionally promote articles on FB so they may turn up with a ‘Promoted’ logo on them.

• Judge says:

  25 May25 May 07:04

  DME = Domodedovo, not Domodevo

• AlanC says:

  25 May25 May 07:59

  O/T
  I remember a good few years back booking a United flight and later the price dropped. I read that if you complained they would refund the difference in vouchers as they wanted to encourage early bookers. I did get a voucher and wondered if any Hotels or Airlines still do this?
  Sorry if asked before.
  AlanC

  • Rob says:

    25 May25 May 09:46

    Doesn’t easyJet do that?

    • rash says:

      25 May25 May 10:17

      They do, not sure if you have to be part of the Easyjet ‘flight club’, I am and have done it in the past. Hertz also do this but you can do that online

      • Darren says:

        25 May25 May 10:30

        I’ve received this form EasyJet, not a club member. They have always been very helpful when cancelling/changing due to family medical issues.

• David Gardiner says:

  25 May25 May 08:23

  On GDRP “We have not asked subscribers to reconfirm their interest as everyone on our list explicitly signed up to receive articles by email in the first place.” i believe the requirement is to be able to evidence a specific person signing up, that would be evidence of email, ip address, time, date, and specific confirmation that it was the owner of the email (i.e. the person clicks a link in the email sent post sign-up to confirm its them, i.e. to stop people putting other people’s names in).

  I’m not sure you’d been able to provide the required data if challenged.

  The mail chimp angle is interesting but i suspect its the company, rather than provider thats liable.

  Theres alot of confusion out there and i’ve seen companies do it different ways, some have wiped out their mailing lists and forced re-application, some have simply told people to read their updated privacy terms. I think it comes down to if challenged could you provide evidence of positive signup.

  • the real harry1 says:

    25 May25 May 09:36

    My wife’s company decided to wipe one of their databases for email communications from the company as whilst they had a button for customers/ interested people to opt in from the start, it didn’t work properly or at least they couldn’t be sure. They thought it was too messy to get people to opt in again so are starting fresh.

    There was an interesting interview on Radio 4 this morning about 7.45 where the senior person responsible for enforcing compliance with GDPR (and investigating complaints/ levying fines) said businesses should not be too worried about 25th May deadline and 100% compliance at this stage and as long as a business could demonstrate progress towards ‘good/ perfect’ compliance, there would never be a penalty levied in that scenario. She has a staff of 200 (I doubt whether this is their only job responsibility?) – they’re after rogue companies deliberately misusing data, not honest businesses that may have failed to tick some of the GDPR compliance boxes.

    • Anonymous says:

      25 May25 May 10:21

      “And who really cares, apart from a bunch of self-serving European bureaucrats”

      Because I’ve been harassed and bothered by estate agents and loan companies that I never asked for. They send me stupid texts from many different numbers. It took me ages to shake off David Wilson Homes. Absolutely terrible behaviour from them. Why do they think it’s acceptable to bombard my personal phone and email with this tripe all across the country. Such blatant disregard from people’s data deserves to be challenged. Good on these bureaucrats..

  • Keith says:

    25 May25 May 09:41

    And who really cares, apart from a bunch of self-serving European bureaucrats, and IT specialists trying to cash in? Just as with the annoying cookie message on websites, none of this addresses the important stuff. And over regulation just inconveniences many.

    • callum says:

      25 May25 May 09:47

      I care. Because of this legislation I am now removed from countless databases I didn’t even realise/forgot I was a part of.

      The cookie warnings were pointless, this actually changes things.

      • Rob says:

        25 May25 May 09:51

        But unless these databases were actually sending you stuff, it doesn’t really matter does it? You have been removed from a list (let’s not call it a database because that overstates the case) you forgot you were on and wasn’t being used for anything.

        It turned out a couple of weeks ago that I could actually see every competition someone had entered on HFP via Gleam. I never even knew we had this data and certainly had no interest in using it for anything. We are now wiping it. It doesn’t change anything.

      • john says:

        25 May25 May 11:37

        @Rob, it’s fine being on a list that wasn’t being used. But data that is not being used ican be forgotten and could potentially get abused by hackers etc in due course, who then may sell it on, so whilst not getting anything from them, and now unsubscribing makes no apparent difference NOW, it could have some difference in due course.

        There are some good things coming from GDPR – forcing people to clear up data is good – but I think the implementation requirements leave a lot to be desired. Also It’s a bit counter intuitive. On a website I help run, we’ve had to create more data to record WHO we’ve sent a GDPR e-mail to now, and it’s just a massive headache generally, taking up a week of my life!

        I bet mailchimp are rolling around laughing in the piles of cash they’re getting from all these GDPR e-mails going out!

      • Callum says:

        25 May25 May 12:57

        Of course it changes things. That’s less junk emails I get (yes I already unsubscribe from most of them, but some don’t work and some are obstructionist – Etihad being one relevant to this site) and my data is now less vulnerable to theft.

        My data has already been exposed through hacks on multiple companies, minimising the risk of that happening again isn’t a bad thing in my book.

  • Rob says:

    25 May25 May 09:46

    MailChimp does indeed have all of that data and uses double opt-in.

    As you would know, it would actually have been illegal for me to email subscribers to ask them to reconfirm, because they only agreed to receive articles from us and not general administrative information. Almost every GDPR email you have had in recent deals is in breach of the original terms under which you agreed to be on their list, amusingly.

    The main upside so far it seems is that My Waitrose has been forced to allow me to opt out their (almost daily) emails without forcefully cancelling my account 🙂

    • john says:

      25 May25 May 11:39

      Not technically illegal. You are allowed to contact people who you have an active relationship with.. e.g. signed up or logged in or commented on the site etc within a reasonable time period.

    • James Smith says:

      25 May25 May 23:39

      Consent is one of the 6 lawful principles you can rely upon for processing data. It’s reasonable to say that you have a legitimate interest in running such a blog to email administrative tasks.

    • Lady Londonh says:

      26 May26 May 12:36

      ? Mywaitrose has had a comms section for a while that allows you to opt out of their comma. Their emails were driving me nuts too but that is how I got them to stop a while back and kept my account.

      • Rob says:

        26 May26 May 13:29

        Ah ok. When it launched they made it compulsory I think?

  • Andrew says:

    25 May25 May 10:05

    There is indeed a lot of confusion out there, but there always has been.

    Don’t forget to add agency law into the mix too, it might date back to the 1870s but it’s still very relevant today. The ICO has twice found in my favour when a company has shrugged its shoulders and blamed a third party marketing company. A company is responsible for the actions of its agents.

• Aliks says:

  25 May25 May 08:30

  The pain point will come when a company is asked to show exactly what information they have on a named individual. If that info doesnt show evidence of informed consent then there could be a problem.
  I suspect it will all be worked out in case law over the next year or so.

• Adam says:

  25 May25 May 08:37

  Good work on providing a clear statement around what HFP is doing on GDPR. Rob. As a privacy consultant, GDPR has been responsible for most of my flights over the last year!

• Zoe says:

  25 May25 May 08:38

  OT on the first part of an ex Oslo Qatar trip to Australia. Glad we picked the Radisson at the airport as we have woken up to discover my (numpty) husband has taken the wrong bag from the carousel last night. I’m sat in arrivals with a coffee while they take him through to look for it. Fingers crossed ….

  • Evan says:

    25 May25 May 18:18

    We had this in Cape Town only it was our bag which was taken by someone else….I hope whoever it was whose bag you took has been reunited with their stuff! The bloke in Cape Town had the temerity to say “‘I’ve been inconvenienced too!” The marvellous woman at lost luggage put him wise. Saying that I hope it’s all sorted and it doesn’t disrupt your trip.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.