Reprimands · Health
NHS Highland
No fineReprimands
Root cause
Misdirected communication
Personal data sent to the wrong recipient — the bcc field, the wrong attachment, the wrong address. Mundane, common, and expensive.
What happened
A formal reprimand has been issued to NHS Highland, which emailed 37 people likely to be accessing HIV services, inadvertently using CC (carbon copy) instead of BCC (blind carbon copy). The error meant recipients of the email could see the personal email addresses of other people receiving the email, with one person confirming they recognised four other individuals, one of whom was a previous sexual partner.
Summarised from the notice published by the ICO on 9 March 2023. Read the original notice — it is the authoritative version.