The Data Protection Act (DPA) is a law designed to protect personal data [data: information without context, eg a list of students with numbers beside their names is data, when it's made clear that those numbers represent their placing in a 100 metre race, the data becomes information ] stored on computers or in an organised paper filing system.

For the GCSE ICT exam, you need to know about the 1998 Act.

The need for the Data Protection Act

During the second half of the 20th century, businesses, organisations and the government began using computers to store information about their customers, clients and staff in databases. For example:

• names
• addresses
• contact information
• employment history
• medical conditions
• convictions
• credit history

Databases are easily accessed, searched and edited. It’s also far easier to cross reference information stored in two or more databases than if the records were paper-based. The computers on which databases resided were often networked. This allowed for organisation-wide access to databases and offered an easy way to share information with other organisations.

The Data, information and databases section has more onsearching databases.

Misuse and unauthorised access to information

With more and more organisations using computers to store and process personal information there was a danger the information could be misused or get into the wrong hands. A number of concerns arose:

• Who could access this information?
• How accurate was the information?
• Could…