salsa-king

the government have lost 25million peoples personal info.

so.. whats the problem?


your name.... big deal.. i can ask you that.
adress.. not hard to find out anyway..
bank details... sort codes/account numbers are on cheques, bank cards anyway



what's the big problem, nothing that has been lost is info someone who wants your info can't get quite easily anyway!!

no bodies 'pin' number is in these details for bank accounts/family credit etc.. as thats your personal security info only you have!


so why all the fuss??




Phil

Prasius

iTrader: (1)

Ohhh.. the voice of reason..

Plus I could probably put together the exact same information just by going through a week of most of these peoples rubbish.

What I can't believe is that anyone is surprised that something went missing in internal mail.

DCI Gene Hunt

Because by knowing a childs name means that peadeoafileophiles can now ****** them in their sleep!!!!!!!!! ........ and use your own bank details to hire a large lorry to carry them all away!!!!

Paul3446

National Insurance numbers?

Plus lots of people have their kids names or date of births as passwords.

Dan W

Its not so much what they lost its the fact that they lost it. Perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that the info wasn't much much more personal.
Although personally I think this is bad enough.

If these halfwits who 'govern' us have their way they will soon be collecting such data.

Its all about the principle.

I wouldn't trust them to deliver a pizza.

Paul3446

Quote:
your name.... big deal.. i can ask you that.
adress.. not hard to find out anyway..
bank details... sort codes/account numbers are on cheques, bank cards anyway


OK, my name's Paul Smith, I bet you can't tell me where I live and my bank details, or my NI number, or how many children I have, or their ages, or their NI numbers, or how old they are, or who I live with, or her name, or her bank details, or her NI number?

OllyK

If it's that easy, please tell me:
My full name
My address
My Bank
My bank account number
My bank sort code
The names and ages of any children I have
My NI number

I expect you should have that all posted up in the next 10 mins or so? Or alternatively, to show how unimportant it is, please post all that information on here about you!

It's more to do with it all being together in 1 place rather than having to trawl through 25 million rubbish bins and then perform numerous internet searches to find out the rest.

[Davey]

The individual items of data are pretty useless but when combined:

D.O.B.
N.I. Number
Full Home Address / Work Address
Full Name (Previous or maiden names maybe?)
Income
Bank Account Details

These could be easily used to either pretend to be you (most security questions are covered) or clone your identity completely for the use of gaining credit agreements, finance on high street goods or even commit other crimes 'in your name'..

If this starts happening there will be BIG problems for HMRC!

Lee247

The worrying bit is the DOB and NI number. I was always told, never to give those two out together

Paul3446

Exactly, and they can't be changed!

PeteBrant

This.

PeteBrant

Well, the D.O.B. can be "modified" depending on the age of the attractive young woman you are talking to

Kevin Mc

Apparently they only wanted 300 records, though this would cost too much, so they requested the whole lot instead

I work with databases, and this wouldn't have been hard to do at all. They'd just need to come up with a way to select the records randomly.

Unless they have virtually no security on the database, only very high level people should have access to all the data. Even as a Database Administrator, the database could be set up so that you couldn't actually see some of the sensitive columns. It can be set up so that different people can see different parts of the data that they need to. Bigger organisations would have an IT security manager who would be able to grant access to other areas of the data as needed.

Here's Oracle's bumph on Database Vault:

If the data had been properly secured in the first place, when the request came in for all the data, it should have started ringing bells straight away. This is way before you get to the stage where the data is transferred and you get into encryption. (If they'd done the 300 records as requested, surely it could have been sent encryted over a secure network???)

PS. You wouldn't get any of this data from our bins. We shred absolutely everything - even junk mail that just has our name and address on...

Leslie

You obviously have not seen the full significance not only of the information on those disks or the basic principle involved in the loss of that information by a government organisation.

Les

Paul3446

Salsa King won't answer for about 10 minutes as he's just compiling mine and Olly's personal information.

olliecampbell

iTrader: (3)

I cant believe they were being sent via CD anyway! Why? and why couldnt they get to the info over an internal secure link?

[Davey]

What you actually think inter-governmental departments are going to have a reliable network infrastructure now?

Paul3446

Apparently that will be up and running by the time they roll out ID cards, with absolutely everything about you stored on them, so there really is no need to worry!

GC8WRX

Lets start a revolt against id cards!!!


WE DONT NEED THEM!!!!!!

Sonic'

LOL @ Salsa King, heres hoping yours is one of the first they 'clone'

Interesting I would like to see you produce all of my details like others have said

Oh and all of my kids details too, if the information is that easy to find outside of this database it shouldnt take you too long

Brendan Hughes

News just received from the Government - apparently this now, more than ever, justifies the ID cards and collection of biometric data, as they will finally be able to identify exactly which civil servant to sack in such situations.

Leslie

Oooooooof!

Les

MattN

I've PM'd the details requested to you and Olly, it's pretty easy to find out.

OllyK

They also only wanted 3 fields, first name, last name and NI number. How much harder is:

SELECT FirstName, LastName, NInumber FROM...
than
SELECT * FROM...

OllyK

Think you got the wrong Olly, no PM recieved here

PeteBrant

I hoped he PM'd it recorded delivery...

MattN

must have got lost in the virtual post ...

boom boom.

How sad I'm I Don't answer that!!

Paul3446

Think you got the wrong Paul too!

Simon C

You mean you all wouldn't like to see somethign like this??

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

Whether the information is unlikely to be much use to fraudsters is largely irrelevant. It's the incompetence which is staggering! Personal details should never be sent by unregistered post - that should be obvious to anyone working as a civil servant!

And this is the Gov that wants ID cards with biometric data!