Thousands of adopted children’s names appear in data leak

It has been revealed that the names thousands of people adopted as children were made available on a genealogy website.

The details were found on the Scotland’s People site which is operated by National Records of Scotland (NRS), an official arm of the Scottish government.

A mother found the details and NRS removed the information 36 hours after as she complained it could “endanger her adopted child”.

The BBC reported that Scotland’s Children and Young People’s Commissioner said the information could have resulted in “a significant risk of harm”.

The mother told the BBC that when adopting her son she had been encouraged to keep his first name. She said:

“I did a search to see how many children with his first name were born in the same year, and to my horror the first entry that came up was his. I searched for someone else who was adopted and found them too.

The whole adoption register was there online for everybody to see. I was horrified. It’s every adoptive parent’s worst nightmare that their child’s adoptive name, which has been carefully shielded through the court process, could be made public.

There’s also a massive concern for adults who don’t know they’ve been adopted.”

Nick Hobbs, the acting Children’s Commissioner in Scotland, backed the mother’s concerns and raised the issue with NRS. He said:

“This is something that raises really serious concerns for us about children’s right to privacy.

There’s a significant risk of harm for some children potentially, by people being able to link their current name with their birth name.

It’s not straightforward to do that but my biggest concern is that you can do it, that that information is available at all.”

Mr Hobbs believes the information could “breach a child’s right to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child”. He added:

“Having your adoption status searchable on a public database clearly engages your right to privacy under both those international conventions.

What we need them to do now is work out a longer-term solution that respects their right to privacy and ensures children are kept safe.”