Within data protection legislation the word “breach” has a defined meaning. A data breach means there was a breach of security on the part of the data controller leading to, amongst other things, destruction or loss or unauthorised disclosure of personal data.

Often data subjects say their rights were breached when they mean they were infringed. For example, if a data controller refused to correct your postal address after you provided evidence of the correct address, which is an infringement of your data protection rights as opposed to a breach of your data protection rights. If that same data controller then issued correspondence to the incorrect postal address and that correspondence was opened by a third party, then that is a data breach.