Following an article published online in The Argus on 12 September 2015, headlined “Update: teenager arrested on suspicion of fraud following Bestival ticket upset”, Ben Hyland-Ward complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) that The Argus intruded into his privacy in breach of Clause 3 (Privacy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.

IPSO upheld the complaint and established a breach of the Editors’ Code. IPSO required The Argus to publish this decision by its Complaints Committee as a remedy to the breach.

The article reported that the complainant had been “arrested after taking thousands of pounds from his friends in payment for festival tickets which he failed to provide”, and that the complainant had been questioned by police “on suspicion of fraud by false representation”. The article included a photograph of the complainant, with a caption which contained the complainant’s phone number.

The complainant was concerned that the publication of his phone number intruded into his privacy, in breach of Clause 3.

The newspaper did not accept that the publication of the complainant’s phone number intruded into his privacy. It said that the caption had been published by mistake, and that it had removed it as soon as it became aware of the error. Further a source had informed it that “hundreds” of his customers would have had his phone number.

The Committee accepted that the caption had been published in error. This did not, however, excuse the newspaper from its obligations under the Code. The Committee started from the point of view that an individual’s personal mobile telephone number generally constitutes private information.

Under the terms of the Code, account will be taken of a complainant’s own public disclosures of information, and the extent to which information is established in the public domain. In this instance, however, there was no evidence (beyond an assertion that the telephone number was known by “hundreds” of people) that the complainant had publicly disclosed the information, and nor was it known to be established in the public domain. The newspaper had accepted that the number had been published in error, and had not sought to justify its publication on public interest or other grounds.

In the full circumstances, the Committee took the view that the publication of this information, although inadvertent, represented a failure to respect the complainant’s private life, in breach of Clause 3.