UK tax-man repeatedly hemorrhages personal financial info of 25 MILLION Brits

A reader writes, "Guy working for UK Revenue burns all 25m personal records held by the department onto two CDs. Sends them to the National Audit Office, unregistered. They don't arrive. So he sends off another couple of CDs. They don't arrive either. Then the head of the department resigns just as it's about to be made public. It's the names, addresses, dates of birth and the employment and bank details of 25 million people. Who needs Russian hackers when you've got the UK government?"

Alistair Darling told the House of Commons this afternoon that two CDs bearing highly sensitive information including bank account numbers and National Insurance numbers failed to arrive after they were sent in the ordinary internal mail between government departments, in a catastrophic breach of security guidelines.
The Chancellor admitted that HMRC had made the same mistake on several occasions in the past six months...
Mr Darling's admission that "I regard this as an extremely serious failure," was met with derisive laughter from MPs. He advised every parent who claims Child Benefit to look very closely at their bank statements in the coming weeks for signs of fraud or identity theft.

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Discussion

Take a look at this

#1 posted by Beschizza

, November 20, 2007 11:43 AM

The odd noise you hear is the U.K.'s plans for a national ID system slipping its surly bonds.

#2 posted by Spherical Time

, November 20, 2007 9:03 PM

Hey, It worked for the Star of India, didn't it?

So wow, this sucks. This doesn't affect you, though, I assume.

#3 posted by Cory Doctorow , November 20, 2007 9:41 PM

Not yet -- ask me again in January when my baby is born.

#4 posted by patholio , November 21, 2007 7:54 AM

While it is awful that this has happened, as Beshizza says with a bit of luck it will be a huge nail in the coffin of the UK ID Database.
Now how much am bid for 25 MILLION UK bank account details with matching National Insurance numbers...?

#5 posted by patholio , November 21, 2007 8:21 AM