What Is a Privacy Breach? The Complete Guide to Types, Laws, Examples & Prevention
Brief
A privacy breach happens when someone’s personal information is accessed, disclosed, collected, or used without their consent or in violation of a privacy law. It doesn’t always involve hacking; a misdirected email or an unlocked filing cabinet can count, as can an employee looking up a record they had no reason to view.
What Is a Privacy Breach?
A privacy breach is any incident in which personal information is handled outside the rules intended to protect it, whether those rules come from law, company policy, or a basic duty of confidentiality.
The information involved can be as sensitive as a medical diagnosis or as ordinary as a home address, but what constitutes a breach is the loss of control: the person to whom the data belongs didn’t agree to how it was used, viewed, or shared.
Not every privacy breach is dramatic.