1. Introduction

Over the past few decades, computers have become ever more important in our day to day lives. Things that the law had never previously had to consider began to crop up. For example, online fraud, hacking and the sheer amount of personal information that we readily, and happily share over the internet.

New laws were written and old laws were updated to better govern and control the use of technology and access to data.

For this syllabus, the Acts you need to know about are:

• The Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act (1988)
• The Computer Misuse Act (1990)
• The Data Protection Act (1998)
• Communications Act (2003)
• The new General Data Protection Regulation (2018)

Some general understanding of the requirements of health and safety legislation for computer workers will also be included.