What is the legal status of looking at hacked datasets like this?
Likely to be similar across Europe.
Profit...
It's personal data in the sense that you're likely not allowed to process them (as a business or corporation -- whether for commercial use or not). But most of these laws are written for companies and for individuals granted access to personal information by those companies.
As a person you're certainly not allowed to distribute the information (or at least not any personally identifiable parts of it) but mere "looking at them" doesn't seem like it would be a breach in and of itself.
The article you linked would indicate this: looking at the data isn't a breach of the data protection act, it merely means whatever you do with the data falls under the provisions of that act, limiting what you can do with it.
So in the UK be careful and anonomise it before working with it -- as is required with e.g. similar (legally obtained) datasets in the social sciences. Then totally delete the raw dataset from your system -- otherwise if you e.g. lose your laptop you become liable for any further re-distribution.
Not planning on looking at it anyway.
> Thanks for all your replies. My general understanding here is that it not explicitly illegal to download but would put me in a possibly uncomfortable legal situation should I get unlucky. I have plenty of other work to do, so I'll avoid satiating my curiosity.
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/08/is_it_illegal_to_do...