Welcome to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) pages for young people – aimed at helping you protect your personal information.
Protecting your personal information
You probably give out some personal information every day, for example your name, address or date of birth. Looking after that information will help prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. It will also help you reduce the chances of receiving spam or other unwanted marketing.
But you also need to know that information held about you is correct. If it’s not, it could cause problems. For example, you may be refused a job, benefits or credit, or even a place at the college or university you want to get in to. In extreme cases, you could even become a victim of identity theft (that’s when someone pretends to be you, and might try to do things like getting money out of your bank account, or signing up to things in your name) or be arrested for a crime you didn’t commit.
The Data Protection Act gives you the right to know what information is held about you and sets out rules to make sure this information is handled properly. Among its other functions, the Information Commissioner’s Office enforces and oversees the Data Protection Act so if you have a complaint about any aspect of data protection, we may be able to investigate and take action on your behalf.
We’ll be developing this site to help you understand more about your information rights. Please tell us what you would find useful and would like to see us cover by emailing us.
Read on to find out more about how you can protect your personal information on social networking sites.