The Your Data Matters awareness campaign has been launched just weeks before GDPR comes into force

Charities are being urged to ensure they treat people’s personal information with care.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) launched its new Your Data Matters public awareness campaign this week.

It is aimed at increasing the public’s trust and confidence in how their data is used and made available.

The campaign provides organisations with off the shelf material to share across their communications channels in the run up to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becoming law on the 25th May.

The package will include emails, adverts, leaflets social media messaging and videos, and will be available to download over the coming weeks.

It aims to deliver educational messages that will help individuals understand the changing data protection environment in a practical and straightforward way – messages that organisations, regardless of their sector or size, can refer to, link to or repeat to complement their own customer and staff communications.

Information commissioner Elizabeth Denham said: “We’ve taken a collaborative approach inviting a range of businesses and organisations – public and private sector – to work with us to develop baseline educational messages about data protection reform for UK citizens. These are messages that will help raise awareness but also, I hope, increase trust in our data driven world.”

With GDPR looming, organisations are under pressure to conform to the new regulations and prove to a cynical public that they are responsible data handlers.

A cyber security survey carried out by the Westminster government in January revealed that only 44% of charities have heard of GDPR.