There are a lot of legal experts out there that are shouting about the enormous amounts of money (potentially millions of pounds) that you can be fined by the ICO, and that you need to be worried about this.
And I could do the same, but I’m not going to.
Here’s why: Whilst you could get hit with one of these fines, evidence to date indicates this is unlikely to happen to your small business.
Great you say…
… but there’s more to the story.
Because you should worry about the effect an encounter with the ICO will have on your reputation plus the time and stress of being on the receiving end of one of their investigations.
If the ICO receives a complaint and decides to take it forward, they will ask questions about ALL aspects of your data handling, not just about the specific case in hand. This will take time and effort from you and your senior managers, and your IT team (or outsourced company).
If after all this they find a breach, they may fine you or they may issue strong words of advice.
Either way, you will almost certainly be named and shamed on their website, and this could have a long-lasting effect on your credibility. This is because when people search for your business on Google, Bing, and so on, the chances are the ICO investigation will be one of the results returned.
The reputation of your business is valuable and is worth protecting.
To do this you need to comply with the rules around the use of personal data in your marketing.
But understanding the rules and then applying them can be a time-consuming process and can be difficult when you have all the other aspects of your business to get right.
Sometimes you have to accept that you need expert advice.