On 27 December 2019, a version of the New Year's Honours
2020 list was accidentally published online by the Cabinet Office.
This high-profile breach raises serious issues of privacy and data
protection because of the profiles of the affected individuals and
the fact that the responsible controller is the Cabinet Office.
The document was published "in error" and contained
address details of people receiving the highest honours, such as
house numbers and postcodes of home addresses. The Cabinet Office
removed the information and informed all data subjects concerned,
however versions of the spreadsheet were subsequently re-uploaded
on social media. Whilst the downloadable document containing the
personal data only remained online for around an hour, the exact
data breach volume and damage suffered by data subjects remains
unknown.
