{"id":6717,"date":"2019-01-25T12:22:17","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T12:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/thousands-tell-hmrc-to-delete-voice-data\/"},"modified":"2019-01-25T12:22:17","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T12:22:17","slug":"thousands-tell-hmrc-to-delete-voice-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/thousands-tell-hmrc-to-delete-voice-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands tell HMRC to delete voice data"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape no-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"Woman on the phone\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/10B8D\/production\/_105339486_mediaitem105339482.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">More than 160,000 people have told HM Revenue and Customs to delete biometric data it gathered during phone calls.<\/p>\n<p>The tax authority captured millions of callers&#8217; voice data after launching its Voice ID system in 2017, but originally gave people no way to opt out.<\/p>\n<p>Privacy group Big Brother Watch said people had been &#8220;railroaded into a mass ID scheme by the back door&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>HMRC now lets people opt out of Voice ID and delete captured &#8220;voiceprints&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But it has kept millions of Voice ID records in a database held by a third party.<\/p>\n<p>Big Brother Watch said the tax authority had &#8220;created one of the largest known state-held voice databases in the world&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>About 7 million people are currently enrolled in the database, which lets taxpayers use their voice instead of a password when calling the helpline.<\/p>\n<p>A Freedom of Information request revealed that 162,185 people had &#8220;opted out&#8221; and had their voice data deleted by December 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Big Brother Watch said it had reported HMRC to the Information Commissioner&#8217;s Office (ICO), suggesting it had broken data protection law.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is down to the ICO to take robust action and show that the government isn&#8217;t above the law,&#8221; Big Brother Watch said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>An HMRC spokesman said: &#8220;Our Voice ID system is very popular with millions of customers as it gives a quick route to access accounts by phone. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All our data is stored securely and customers can opt out of Voice ID or delete their records any time they want.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The organisation is cooperating with the ICO, which is investigating to see whether the system breached data protection law.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-47001458\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Getty Images More than 160,000 people have told HM Revenue and Customs to delete biometric data it gathered during phone calls. The tax authority captured millions of callers&#8217; voice data after launching its Voice ID system in 2017, but originally gave people no way to opt out. Privacy group Big Brother Watch said &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}