LOPD Fraud

The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) has warned in recent weeks of several fraudulent actions affecting the activity of data protection consultancy and advice (LOPD). The AEPD emphasizes the need to leave these data protection tasks in the hands of professional experts who carry out their work in compliance with the legislation. Otherwise we will be incurring in faults that can cause sanctions and we can be subject to fraud. Among the most recent fraud that the Agency has revealed is the sending by companies and individuals of several communications pretending to be from the AEPD (using letterheads, signatures of the Agency) communicating to users a requirement of the AEPD on compliance with data protection regulations, even with warnings about the applicable penalty regime. In the communication itself, the fraudulent companies offer their advisory and consulting services LOPD / data protection in order for the business to adapt to the Data Protection Regulation. The Agency in a statement wanted to clarify that it does not make requests in the terms that have been indicated and warns those who receive them to carefully analyze the identification of the sender in order to avoid confusion. The AEPD asks for everyone’s help to avoid these frauds and recommends that when receiving these communications, those affected should contact its staff. The Agency also points out that it will analyze the complaints it receives about these behaviors, reserving the exercise of the pertinent legal actions to prevent those who process data from being victims of this type of practices through the misleading use of their image. On the other hand, the Agency has warned to question those companies that offer their services to perform security audits by telephone, since these telephone audits of security measures would not allow to obtain the results established in the data protection regulations. “The concept of auditing security files necessarily implies carrying out checks on the audited information systems, something that is not possible to carry out over the telephone.” Source: AEPD