Schillings specialises in protecting the privacy and reputations of the world’s most successful people. Credited with establishing the right of privacy in England, here are its top tips for protecting your personal information in today’s new era of transparency

Has your stomach ever churned on opening a newspaper and seeing your name in it? If it has, the first question you probably asked yourself was how the paper had got hold of the information. The answer is often closer to home than you may imagine.

Working in the fields of privacy and reputation, we often find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of advising clients who are the subject of an article that the material has come from their own camp. Occasionally it’s been sent for malicious reasons but too often it’s just the result of an inadvertent disclosure: someone not thinking through the privacy implications of their activities.

For example, planning applications are often submitted with no thought as to how they will enable the press to pore over the details of someone’s home. This is needless, as it is very easy to avoid clients’ names being linked to the application. On other occasions private details are included in lawsuits with no consideration to the fact that it will not just be the judge and other side who might see them. And we are all familiar with the stories of spouses and children freely disclosing private information, such as holiday photos, on their social media accounts.

And now there is yet another way for personal information to become public. Since coming into effect in April 2016, the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 now requires UK companies to keep a register of individuals who control more than 25 per cent of a firm. Non-compliance with this disclosure obligation is a criminal offence and could involve custodial sentences.

On this new public register, those who exercise significant control over a company need to disclose the following: their year and month of birth, their nationality, their country of residence, their service address, the date they became a person with significant control and their level of ownership and/or voting rights.

Any one of those pieces of personal information on its own may seem innocuous. But pieced together, they can provide a roadmap to far more information about an individual. For example, once someone has the month and year of your birth, it doesn’t involve much digging to determine your full date of birth, and from there initiate phishing campaigns or use social engineering to obtain information or commit fraud.

This requirement for more information about the owners and controllers of companies to be made available to the public forms part of a general trend, and links to former Prime Minister David Cameron’s commitment at the 2013 G8 Summit to create more transparency to deal with tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing. It also aligns the UK with the EU’s Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which makes beneficial ownership registers a requirement. Contrast the new position with what used to have to be lodged at Companies House – just shareholders’ names.

The result of this move for increased transparency is that privacy must be a consideration more than ever before. The key question to ask when disclosing personal information is what will be placed in the public domain? Often, simple steps can be taken to avoid disclosing information needlessly. For example, when submitting information for the new register, ensure your service address is not the same as your residential address.

Moreover, privacy in this new era of transparency should not be considered in isolation. Instead commercial, social, physical and digital confidentiality should be viewed holistically. Vulnerability in one area can impact elsewhere. A messy and out-of-date digital footprint, for example, could lead to intrusion into private relationships.

The trend for transparency, coupled with developments in technology and the increased interest in the personal lives of successful individuals, can make protecting privacy seem like a futile fight. Yet we know this need not be the case. You can meet the requirements of transparency without giving up your right to privacy. With careful planning and close scrutiny of information relinquished through business arrangements, a life in the public eye can still be private.

Schillings are lawyers, intelligence analysts, cyber security experts, ex-military strategists and risk consultants who prevent and deal with threats and crises. Find out more at schillingspartners.com

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