BY Shanti Das for The Sunday Times

Companies collecting data for pubs and restaurantsto help them fulfil their contact-tracing dutiesare harvesting confidential customer information to sell.
Legal experts have warned of a “privacy crisis”caused by a rise in companies exploiting QR barcodesto take names, addresses, telephone numbers and email details, before passing them on to marketers, credit companies and insurance brokers.
The “quick response” mobile codes have been widely adopted by the hospitality, leisure and beauty industries as an alternative to pen-and-paper visitor logs since the government ordered businesses to collect contact details to give to NHS Test and Trace if required.
Any data collected should be kept by the business for 21 days and must not be used “for any purposes other than for NHS Test and Trace”, according to government guidelines.
Butsome firms used by businesses to meet the new requirements have clauses…
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