Personal details of every child in UK lost ...

Brown Sauce · Post by **Brown Sauce** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:59 pm

[web]https://politics.guardian.co.uk/economic ... 09,00.html[/web]

The chancellor told MPs the information went missing after a junior official in the department failed to follow standard procedures and sent a "full copy of the data" to the NAO by courier - not by recorded or registered mail.

When it became clear the discs had not arrived, the same official sent the information again - this time by registered post.

The first set of data was sent on October 18, and senior management at HMRC was told it was missing on November 8. The chancellor said he found out 10 days ago.

astounding. A "junior official", whatever the fuck one of them is, can download all this highly confidential info, especially bank account details, and burn them to cds. I don't believe it, I really don't.

Post by **Skylace** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 7:05 pm

You know, I know we're all human and make mistakes but this is one enormous cock up. I can't even begin to imagine the long term damage this is going to create.

Mandy · Post by **Mandy** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 7:13 pm

Another article on this :

https://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/uk_ ... 103566.stm

Confidential details of 25m child benefit recipients have been lost by the revenue, Alistair Darling tells MPs.

The records include parents' and children's names, addresses, dates of birth, child benefit and national insurance numbers and in some cases, bank or building society details.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said: "This is an extremely serious and disturbing security breach. This is not the first time that we have been made aware of breaches at the HM Revenue and Customs - we are already investigating two other breaches.

The prime minister's official spokeswoman said Gordon Brown has "full confidence" in Mr Darling. She added that Mr Darling has not offered to resign.

Post by **eefanincan** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 10:49 pm

It's just beyond belief that something like this happened. Something as simple as sending it registered mail could have prevented it...... you've got to wonder what else has been lost that their not telling.

Post by **faceless** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 10:59 pm

I really can't see any reason why one person had this info outside of the network. Then again, knowing the shambles of government systems they probably usually store the whole thing on 5 1/4" floppies...

Mandy · Post by **Mandy** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:09 am

faceless wrote:I really can't see any reason why one person had this info outside of the network. Then again, knowing the shambles of government systems they probably usually store the whole thing on 5 1/4" floppies...

That's being generous .. more like 8" floppies (yep, they did exist). I am fond of my 5 1/4" floppies (320KB - 360KB)

Ash · Post by **Ash** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 10:34 am

Even if you're working as a Network Administrator, only in the event of server migration (and other special cases), under special circumstances you're allowed to copy personal data at large scale in the encrypted form. That's what I knew when I did my undergrad in MIS (Management Information System). And this is the problem one may face when people start messing around with primary data, completely disregarding the protocol. Clearly, there are some other protocols of safety, which it seems, are not implemented in the govt sector

I have one very important request to all parents living in UK. Please change your password- make it something that you don't think automatically. For e.g., my 1st name is Muhammad. Say I may think automatically to put a password like muhammad1234 or 1234muhammad, etc- YOU MUST NOT USE SUCH PASSWORD. Try something completely random, like eO9d1R5- combination of number and (both small and capital) letters. This makes password recovery/identification exponentially difficult- thus making you a lot safer. I don't know why childcare benefit office was telling that if you've used your child's name then you should change it. It should be for ANY name.

Regarding postal service: someone from HMRC came to Radio 5 Live this morning and said that they are not allowed to send any internal via recorded delivery- which is done centrally- in other words, all office send their stuff to one central point from where everything is sent as simple 2 Class delivery, with no exception. Now if similar method was used in this case then it may explain the reason why and how it's lost.

Brown Sauce · Post by **Brown Sauce** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 11:51 am

on a positive note, it might put the ID card shite to bed for a good while.

luke · Post by **luke** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 12:07 pm

Brown Sauce wrote:on a positive note, it might put the ID card shite to bed for a good while.

thats what i've been thinking - lets hope so anyway

Post by **faceless** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 2:10 pm

'Breaking News' on News 24 (played after they reported again about English footballers' shame at losing a game) is that the discs are apparently 'still on government property'

Brown Sauce · Post by **Brown Sauce** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 12:05 pm

or maybe on TNT property along with the other SIX missing copies.

hope Damian was right last night about wassisorername lying to the commons ...

luke · Post by **luke** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 10:28 am

i can't believe that this is actually true ...

edit : its not!

i've removed the pic - it was just a screenshot of some torrent site with what looked like downloads of the cd's!

Mandy · Post by **Mandy** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 12:30 pm

mmm... note the # of Leechers (millions+) .. Is that even possible that 1 seeder could feed so many leechers in such a short period of time ?

Chances are all are on a crawl ..

But worryingly, it shows the HUGE interest in getting the data ...

Update : Thanks Luke for removing the link after confirming it was a hoax.