Overview Overview of the Data Protection Act 1998 How to use this guide to the Data Protection Act 1998. The Act became Law in July 1998, but was not brought into force until 1 March 2000.
Directors can face personal liability .
If you are not registered and fall within the compulsory notification provisions you will be committing a criminal offence . Although there are some transitional provisions, the Act ought to be regarded as applying to you in full if your business was established after October 1998. One major change sees manual records coming within the data protection regime. There are consequences for your contractual arrangements with third parties and there are a number of staff issues . Data subjects have new rights which can be enforced against you by the Data Protection Commissioner 's office and the Courts .