More UK personal data stolen

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Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

Is there no end to the stupidity of these people, leaving his laptop with all that unencrypted data in his car overnight, f***ing idiots Rolling Eyes

Quote:

Police probe theft of MoD laptop

West Midlands police are investigating the theft of a laptop from a Royal Navy officer which held the personal details of 600,000 people.

Police said the laptop was taken from a vehicle parked overnight in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham.

The laptop contains data including passport numbers, National Insurance numbers and bank details.

Full story here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7197045.stm

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

See with all these "little" accidents you would think some manager somewhere would be bright enough and say "To adhere to the data protection act and in line with recent events - No data however insignificant can leave the building by any means" then pay people to process the data on the site.

Questions - Why would the uk send data to USA to be processed? surely there are many people in the UK who need a job and could have been employed to do the work.
Why would anyone need all the data on a laptop? surely he isnt going to be processing 600,000 names etc and you have to ask did he need that on his laptop the answer would have been NO
Why would someone send two disks in the post?

Its this blatant oversight that causes all these problems, a security firm would have stopped it in its tracks by saying "you dont need that data so you cant take it"

If they do need to send data "abroad" then perhaps use there brains and use a secure line and send it as a datastream at least that way when its encrypted the worst that can happen is the line drops but the data cant be "stolen" or "lost"

In 2007 there are so many ways to protect data it beggars belief they dont use them.

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 11:13 am

Hey SP cut them some slack!

Let's face it, it's not as though the UK authorities have any recent experience with losing personal data, so they'd have had no reason to be particularly on their guard, or for introducing compulsory encryption for all government laptops. Rolling Eyes

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 11:17 am

digital-one wrote:

surely there are many people in the UK who need a job and could have been employed to do the work.

Wash your mouth out with soap, D1 - this is strictly against the free market that runs all UK lives. The market knows best and will generate the optimal solution (for the shareholders).

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 4:35 pm

Quote:

Hundreds of documents containing sensitive personal data have been found dumped on a roundabout in Devon.

LINK

The bloke that found them said it had happened before.

To think they want to be trusted with all our data to make ID cards for us. Rolling Eyes

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

Don't Panic

Now how dangerous could this loss of data be?
I mean the last time something like this happened Jeremy Clarkson published his bank detail in a newspaper to show how harmless it was.
I mean nothing nasty happened to him. Did it?
Rolling Eyes

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 5:46 pm

I am going to get my credit report and see if I have any surprises.

http://www.experian.co.uk/creditreport

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

@ old7, yea but they keep losing it, if they employ local people they wont lose it so quickly lol. its when they send it abroad the problems can occur, everyone knows the royal mail lose 6m items every year so a couple of disks have no chance lol. keep it in the same office is the proper solution.

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:01 pm

Bit of a storm in a teacup this one. The laptop potentially has access to hundreds of thousands of records. Trouble (for the thief) is, you need to connect it to the proper MoD server to get to them. That can only be done through a MoD networked PC, and obviously you need the right username and access, and the passwords.
There is nothing stored on the hard drives of these type of "stand alone" computers, but then of course those sort of facts don't sell newspapers.

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:25 pm

Does anyone actually believe the shite they print in those tabloid comics passing themselves off as "news"papers anyway? Sadly, it seems like they do.

Master Baiter Joined: 30 May 2007 Posts: 101

With a slight topic deviation ... if ID cards were introduced would you feel strongly enough to break the law and refuse (assuming you, of course, disagree with idea) ?

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