In Durham, a Durham family shared their horror through their Facebook page after learning through their attorneys that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), which had helped them settle, had lost a legal application, which included their personal information.

Louise Allsop-Wood, 30, and Megan Allsop-Wood, 26, filed the document in December 2020 with the London Civil and Family Courts to give Louise parental authority over Megan’s 1-year-old daughter Aria Rose. For three weeks, they did not hear anything.

She was surprised to receive a message on Facebook from a third party who had received the application regarding a different issue. The document contained sensitive personal information such as names, dates of birth, passport numbers, and application data.

In mid-January, Megan and Louise received confirmation from the Ministry of Justice that the paperwork had been sent out incorrectly, but were only compensated £50 for the inconvenience. In addition, the Ministry of Justice stated that papers received in the post room should be documented and safeguarded separately. It should also maintain a spreadsheet of the documents relating to parental responsibility agreements.

Megan and Louise sought assistance from data breach lawyers to affirm legal following the issues. However, The Ministry of Justice eventually admitted guilt, and the case was resolved, with each adult getting £1,500 and Aria receiving £750.

It’s always nerve-wracking to fill out legal paperwork and forms. Megan, a Fitness Instructor, said we felt the application would be handled appropriately. Our personal information has been given to an unknown individual. Moreover, It came as a complete surprise, and we were just grateful that they decided to seek me out. Additionally, you never expect anything like this to happen, especially when dealing with the legal system.

It’s encouraging that efforts seem to have been made to prevent this from occurring again, but it begs the issue of how this could have happened to us in the first place. Again, it is necessary to learn lessons.

We have a great deal of confidence in organizations of all kinds when we provide them with personal information. However, you would never think something like this would occur when dealing with the court system. According to Ryan Adamson, Litigation Executive at affirm legal, which represented the family.

When this happened, our customers were naturally outraged, and their case is another example of the damage that data breaches of this sort can have. While we were glad to assist them in reaching an agreement, this must not happen again.

Affirm Legal was one of the first legal firms in the UK to focus on data protection and data breach claims, and it now boasts one of the country’s biggest teams of data breach specialists. This firm represents clients in cases involving individual data breaches as well as cases involving the private information of a group.

Nonetheless, the individuals may have been victims of a targeted attack or a large-scale data breach.