Three men have been jailed in the United Kingdom after sending bogus letters demanding that small businesses pay to register under the 1998 Data Protection Act (DPA).Leeds Crown Court sentenced the men who sent thousands of letters demanding registration fees of 135 pounds (US$266) to register under the act in a scam that could have brought the fraudsters up to 2 million pounds.The court heard that the fraudsters had already banked 62,575 pounds, but had thousands more demands printed and ready to be posted.Liaquat Khan admitted two charges of conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to two and a half years in jail. Parminder Kaur Johal and Zahir Abbas Shah also admitted two charges of conspiracy to defraud and were sentenced to 13 months and eight months, respectively. A fourth person, Nosheen Sheridan, admitted one charge of conspiracy and was given an 18-month supervision order with 50 hours of unpaid work.Judge Roger Ibbotson said the men were involved in a substantial and systematic fraud. The men had specifically targeted the owners of small businesses and relied on their wish to act lawfully and not commit any breach of the regulations, he said. The Information Commissioner’s Office issued a warning to remind business not to be misled by bogus agencies sending bogus registration notices and demanding money.ICO Chief Operating Officer Simon Entwisle said: “We are delighted with this result. Once again it sends out a very clear message: If you run a bogus data protection agency, you will be investigated and prosecuted.”He added: “If a business receives a letter out of the blue demanding more than 35 pounds to register under the DPA, then this will be a scam. Our simple message to businesses is to disregard the letter and do not pay the fee demanded.”The convictions follow an operation involving the ICO, police and other enforcement agencies.—Tash Shifrin, Computerworld UK Related content news Google Chrome zero-day jumps onto CISA's known vulnerability list A serious security flaw in Google Chrome, which was discovered under active exploitation in the wild, is a new addition to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency’s Known Exploited vulnerabilities catalog. By Jon Gold Oct 03, 2023 3 mins Zero-day vulnerability brandpost The advantages and risks of large language models in the cloud Understanding the pros and cons of LLMs in the cloud is a step closer to optimized efficiency—but be mindful of security concerns along the way. By Daniel Prizmant, Senior Principal Researcher at Palo Alto Networks Oct 03, 2023 5 mins Cloud Security news Arm patches bugs in Mali GPUs that affect Android phones and Chromebooks The vulnerability with active exploitations allows local non-privileged users to access freed-up memory for staging new attacks. By Shweta Sharma Oct 03, 2023 3 mins Android Security Vulnerabilities news UK businesses face tightening cybersecurity budgets as incidents spike More than a quarter of UK organisations think their cybersecurity budget is inadequate to protect them from growing threats. By Michael Hill Oct 03, 2023 3 mins CSO and CISO Risk Management Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe