Daily Archives: Wednesday, May 19, 2021

  • Track & trace ‘partner’ sent 84,000 nuisance emails

    ICO logoThe Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has today reported it has fined a Hertfordshire company for sending direct marketing emails to people who provided their personal data for contact tracing purposes as part of the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

    St Albans-based Tested.me Ltd (TML) provides digital contact tracing services which work by offering people a QR code to scan when arriving at their destination.

    TML sent nearly 84,000 nuisance emails at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic between September and November last year, when businesses were using private QR code providers to collect personal data to comply with government contact tracing rules.

    The ICO fined TML £8,000 for using personal data for marketing purposes without adequate valid consent, contrary to law.

    The ICO has created guidelines for businesses to follow as the UK economy continues to open up. Providers should:

    • Adopt a data protection by design approach (DPBD) from the start when they develop new products;
    • Make privacy policies clear and simple so that people understand how their information will be handled;
    • Not keep any personal data they have collected for more than 21 days – in line with regulations brought in last year for the collection of information for contact tracing;
    • Not use the personal data for marketing or any other purpose;
    • Keep up to date with the ICO’s online guidance.
  • SUSE S.A. successfully launched on Frankfurt stock exchange

    SUSE logo

    SUSE was the first Linux distribution I ever got working successfully on one of my machines. Therefore, I still keep an eye on developments within the company.

    Today German IT news site heise reports that SUSE S.A. has now launched on the stock market. Shares in the Nuremberg-based software supplier are being traded in Frankfurt. The company had previously set the final offer price at €30 Euro, at the lower end of the originally planned €29-34 price range. At 9:15 the opening price after the IPO auction, the initial opening share price was €29.50.

    By launching on the stock market, the Linux developer originally wanted to raise up to €1.1 bn. The share price declined slightly after the start of trading, which is not uncommon after an IPO, and the shares are currently trading at over €30.

    The traditional ringing of a bell was replaced by a virtual version with SUSE CEO Melissa Di Donato ringing a 3D-animated virtual bell in front of a video wall.

    SUSE has been marketing open source software since 1992, particularly its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) Linux distribution, together with several infrastructure products for commercial use. It has been based in Nuremberg since 2011 and Melissa Di Donato, who previously worked for SAP, has been the company’s CEO since 2019. Ms Di Donato remarked that the stock market flotation was a new chapter for SUSE. In 2019 SUSE was acquired from Micro Focus by global investment company EQT, since when SUSE has undergone considerable year-on-year growth both in terms of its income and customer base, particularly as regards long-term commercial contracts.

    SUSE recently stated that its takeover of Rancher Labs – completed in December 2019 – has proved to be particularly promising. Following this move, SUSE is now offering Rancher’s popular management platform for Kubernetes clusters in addition to its SLES software products.