Data protection change

The Data Protection Act 1998 comes into force on 1 March 2000. The Act gives individuals the right to object to having information about them used for direct marketing and puts controls on the processing of

sensitive data, for example on ethnicity. The Act will also give new protection to employees where their employer keeps manual files about them. Under the 1984 Data Protection Act employees only had a right to see information if is was stored on a computer, allowing employers to circumvent the legislation by keeping personal files in a paper format.