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How much is 25m names, addresses and bank details worth?
Not much if you’re HMG, it would seem. Skimmer has a post on the subject of the Latest Great Data Loss ™ at OnceAroundTheBlog which I think encapsulates the position that a hefty percentage of all people in the UK are now in.
But we musn’t worry; everything’s OK. Gordon’s apologised, the head of HMRC has resigned and the junior clerk responsible for actually putting the CDs in the envelope has been given the push. So everything’s good again.
Oh, except for the fact that there’s two CDs out there SOMEwhere just waiting to be exploited by anyone with the desire to do so, and the fact that the ‘error’ has only arisen because of policy decisions taken higher up in HMRC, which decreed that they would send the National Audit Office ALL of the data they held, rather than just the names and NI numbers they’d actually asked for; apparently, ‘dis-aggragating’ the data “wasn’t cost-effective”.
This is the same Government that wants to introduce a national ID card scheme, who have promised us that our fingerprint and other biometric data is perfectly safe and not open to mis-use, abuse or loss. Yeah, right.
Meanwhile, someone somewhere has got a massive mailing list to sell. Even at 10p per name, they’re onto a winner.
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