HMRC loses 15m peoples bank details.

I find it pretty worrying that any one person can actually download that much data, and of that nature, on to a disc for any reason.
 
Great, Now I gotta spend the next few weeks checking my bank details everyday to make sure nothing fishy is going on...On one hand, i don't want another 'me' someone in the UK, neither does any of you lot either lol, but then again, they can't exactly use my bank details to raid my bank because there aint anything in it lol
 
They say that this disc may have fallen into the wrong hands, but it's ok though, all the records are password protected LMAO.....It would be a hackers playground and would be open within minutes...
 
Yet more proof of the state's incompetance. Do people really want to give these muppets more powers over our lives?
 
This is nothing. The real attoricities by labour are the ones you will never hear of. I can give you a good example from where I work. Ok, you're the head of the home office, and you have to negotiate a new contract to get a computer system created. You sign a £20 million contract for a company to do the work. Now I'll start out by saying, that £20 million is an awful lot of money. Just think of how many skilled programmers that would employ. However.

That company then fail to deliver a working bit of software. :confused:

Then they bump up the price to £90 million to get it working. :o

And they have a clause in the contract where if the package is not taken up then the tax payer has to pay a £50 million get out clause. :(

Now who would have signed that contract, unless they were corrupt.
 
MookJong said:
Is it even legal to send peoples details unencrypted by post like this? If it is, then it ruddy well shouldn't be.
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I think the way they saw it was its password protected so it should be ok...It should never have been sent by post 'un-recorded' in the first place.
Do they not know that passwords can be cracked???
 
Trojan said:
Same here. You with Cap or Fujitsu?
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I have the misfortune to work with both of them on a daily basis and while Cap do have some merit, Fujitsu are the most inept bunch I've ever encountered.

Outsourced IT in government makes the in-house teams look like paragons of efficiency and intellect.
 
Mulder said:
This kind of intensely private information should be stored on extra secure, backed up IT systems, not on compact discs. It's just another example of Gordon Clown's Government acting in a criminally irresponsible way.
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Of course the information IS stored on secure, backed-up IT systems. However in this case some idiot took a dump of the information held in that system to pass to the NAO.

I'm amazed that this has happened tbh - most government departments have an in-house courier system for inter-departmental transfer of documents and are also linked via the Government Secure Intranet, which could also have been used to send the data.
 
This has really made me think twice about ID cards, previously I was a stalward supporter of the idea but now i'm starting to think it'd be awful. It seems that simple security measures can be ignored by JUNIOR staff.

The instant I heard that they'd lost unencrypted data I was shocked even though my details won't be part of it, but at the time I did say to my wenchie that I'd be surprised if the claim that the files were passworded wasn't completely made up. Lets face it, that's probably not true. If you don't encrypt something why bother sticking a password on it? Hell it's probably crackable by any downloadable brute force program.
 
There should have been no way for the junior official to copy the data to CD in the first place, shocking level of incompetence IMHO.
 
aardvark said:
was that the same professor that was on newsnight a couple of week ago defending NR? the same professor who has quite a lot of NR shares???? hmmm, no conflict of interest there....

if the loan book really was as strong as they say then they would have no trouble selling the company and yet no one is interested. If the loan book was strong then why would the markets not loan them any credit - the cause of this mess in the first place (although paragon, B&B and A&L are pretty much screwed as well.)

NR is a joke and should have been allowed to go broke just like any other badly run business - i doubt we will see much of that money any time soon.
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I dunno if it was the same professor or not - are you telling me it was? Tbh they were discussing whether the shareholders should get bailed out as well, the prof was like, no way dude.

BTW, people are interested in buying Northern Rock, just for less than it's current market value.
 
The reason I think this is a wider issues beyond the actual loss of the data is the culture of apathy that the Goverment seems to have to our private information.

I heard the file was not encypted so it's probably in an easily readable format, delimited text file of some kind, 25 million records is a hell of a lot ;)

HEADRAT
 
thing is..if it was really nicked.. a sneaky criminal would have copied the originals then sent them on and nobody would have been any the wiser as no alarms would have been raised and no suspician aroused....originals go where they are supposed to go and you have the copies to sell to the highest bidder..

which makes it all the more likely its lying trapped behind a wheel arch in a van somewhere

but it is a crazy way to transport things..for bid/tender documents and the like we have to deliver them in person and get a receipt so we know its gone to the right place/person..and that sort of info is nowhere near as sensitive as this
 
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