 Blog Post | [Archive copy hosted by UK Trans Info] |
Brief Summary
Blog post by Steve Wood, Head of Policy Delivery at the Information Commissioner's Office, regarding the data protection implications of changing your name and gender on records.
This post was originally published on the ICO Blog and is reproduced here with permission.
Extract from Document
Names are an essential part of our identity. We use them every day, from conversation with friends to official transactions. They are perhaps the archetypal article of ‘personal data’ and can provide information about other aspects of your life such as ethnic background, religion or gender. So, the decision to change them is normally not taken lightly.
The reasons we do so are varied and can range from personal preference, marriage and divorce to personal safety. For a transgender person, changing his or her name can be one of the earliest steps in the process of transitioning to a different gender and is often one of the first indications to the wider world of this change. Changing a name, and for trans* people, gender can bring up a number of data protection issues that organisations should be careful to get right.
