Data Protection Act 1999

Hello Everyone

My name is Sue and live for most of the year on the Costa Blanca, our Urbanisation is Administrated by a company called Servigest which for the most part do a great job. However we have all received a letter saying that our Communities have to pay €150 each to declare all our information to a third party Company dealing with Data Protection.

My question is this; the Data Protection Act was set up in 1999 and we are now told it is illegal not to present all our details to this third party company for the price of €150 otherwise we could be fined €6,000? Has any other Community Property Owner had to do this on the advice of their Administrators?

I have tried to find out what this is all about on the Net but have only come up with the Law itself which was set up to comply with EU Law.

Regards
Sue

Hi Sulie, I thought the idea of Data Protection was NOT to give your details to a 3rd party!!

I have e mailed our Administrator ( different one to yours ) to ask him if he has any knowledge of all this.......will post again when I get a reply.

Sounds like a scam to me! There are similar ones circulating in the UK, usually to small businesses stating they must be registered for data protection and that it will cost them £500 for the work to be done. In reality, if the registration is actually needed, it is usually only a matter of a few pound to do it yourself.

Has this letter come from your administrators? If so, ask them what it is all about. If not, find out who gave them your address details. If it is the whole urbanisation, it can only have come from one place!!

Tread cautiously, and perhaps PM Maria to see what she thinks..

Mark

Our Administrator says he has never heard of any such thing and has advised that you do not give personal or bank details to anyone without first consulting your solicitor.

Our Administrator would not give details ( which he obviously has ) to anyone.

Hello Everyone

Thank you for the replies; our President has again spoken to the Administrators asking for a clearer explanation as to why our Community has to pay €150 to protect our Data when the Spanish Data Protection Act 1999 does that anyway.

Their explanation is this, your Community will be safeguarded against unwanted Mail and your Communities Data is protected.
They went on to say that if a President fails to comply with this they can be fined personally up to €600,000.00!! Our President then said that it seems as though your Company (Servigest) has to pay for a Licence or something to comply with the Data Protection act because you are dealing with Communities and you are passing on this cost to the said Communities and she said it was something like that!!

So we are no further forward at the moment, I am going back at the weekend and we have decided to go and see a Lawyer to get a better understanding of what is going on.

Looking at the replies above and reading that another Administrator has not heard of this it really seems odd doesn't it.

Also looking forward to hearing what Karen's Administrator says about this.

Thanks again
Regards
Sue