DMBM510220 - Customer contact and data security: confidentiality: responsibility

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Your responsibility

In Debt Management and your work for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) you will handle a great deal of personal and confidential information about the affairs of our customers. This means that you have responsibility for the protection and confidentiality of this information.

As an employee of HM Revenue and Customs you are under a very strict legal duty to maintain the confidentiality of information about our customers. You have accepted this by signing a declaration of secrecy when you joined HMRC, see DMBM511600.

Information provided to us should be treated as strictly confidential and not disclosed to any third parties without the consent of the customer.

This means you can look at, or ask others for, information only if you need it for your particular job and are legally entitled to the information as an employee of HMRC.

(This content has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000)Information Disclosure Guide(This content has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000)

When on dealing with customers as part of your day to day work in DM you should always verify the individual you are speaking to regardless of who they say they are in order to protect the confidentiality of the customer’s information. You should only disclose information once you are sure that you are talking to the customer or an authorised person, see DMBM512800.