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UK: 25m child benefit records lost

dynamicv said:
That data is enough to take out a mobile phone contract, pass a credit check, then walk out with a handset that you've not paid for. Or any other form of electrical goods where credit terms are offered and delivery is not required. Computers for instance.
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Hmmm, yes, could be a problem. Hopefully it won't 'fall into the wrong hands' but, no doubt...
 
dynamicv said:
That data is enough to take out a mobile phone contract, pass a credit check, then walk out with a handset that you've not paid for. Or any other form of electrical goods where credit terms are offered and delivery is not required. Computers for instance.
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Don't most credit checks want time at current address? most will want employment details (for computers electrical goods etc)
 
dynamicv said:
What the hell sort of organisation not only allows junior employees access to the bank account details of half the UK population, but also permits them to burn those details to CD and ship them out of the office? And what the hell are the NAO doing even asking for this data in the first place? This shambles is symptomatic of a far bigger problem within the Treasury and HMRC. They obviously don't give a **** about data security, and the man at the top is doing nothing about it.

This is the sort of incident that brings down governments by showing just how deep their failings go. One third of voters are potentially compromised by this. If Darling doesn't go, Labour haven't got a hope at the next election.
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The chairman is there to take the fall. It achieves nothing. His analog in the Civil Service needs to be re-educated or be gone, the local mandarin needs to be censured and the junior needs to be fired.
 
Jaffa Cake said:
More so, one third of voter's children are potentially compromised too. That's what makes this even more potentially damaging for the Government.
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scotthayes said:
You'll have to explain that one to me.
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As Dynamicv said, it affects every voter who has a child. i.e. 1/3 or more of all voters.

By compromised I guess he means try to get into the kids' myspace/facebook accounts or stalk them with the data obtained, or wait a few years till they are older and try to open fake accounts in their name or buy things etc.

In the case of kids with unmarried mothers, now the mother's maiden name is known, which is a common password.
 
RedTomato said:
By compromised I guess he means try to get into the kids' myspace/facebook accounts or stalk them with the data obtained, or wait a few years till they are older and try to open fake accounts in their name or buy things etc.
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I really hope he didn't mean that, because that is just a dumb argument.

Yes the parents have reason to be concerned, but not kids.
 
scotthayes said:
I really hope he didn't mean that, because that is just a dumb argument.

Yes the parents have reason to be concerned, but not kids.
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Name, address (from which school can be easily deduced), date of birth, parent's names. Not much else required to steal a child's identity really, for whatever purpose.
 
of course, everyone is working on the assumption that the discs were stolen and are now in the hands of some evil criminal mastermind and not just lost by good old TNT.

dynamicv said:
Name, address (from which school can be easily deduced), date of birth, parent's names. Not much else required to steal a child's identity really, for whatever purpose.
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But that information is very easy to find anyway
 
A bit more background on why the data was sent out in the first place - from yesterday's debate in Parliament.

"Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): I am grateful to the Comptroller and Auditor General and to the Chancellor for briefing me this morning. May I just make one or two things clear from the CAG’s briefing? He requested this information—the national insurance numbers—to create a sample to enable him to carry out the audit. It is clear that the CAG specifically asked that all personal details, bank account details and all that sort of information should be removed before this was sent. That is the most important thing. The National Audit Office simply asked for the national insurance numbers; this had nothing to do with personal details."

[empasis mine]. So the NAO asked for a list of NI numbers (huh?) to do some wierd number juggling with, and got sent the full monty, complete with missing knickers.

If anyone wants more info, look at

news.bbc.co.uk
guardian.co.uk
timesonline.co.uk

etc
 
scotthayes said:
But that information is very easy to find anyway
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You are Alistair Darling and I claim my £10 😀

It normally takes effort to find the information on each child. With this database you instantly get millions to choose from. Say you want to take the identity of a 13-year old girl from Birmingham of a particular race, for whatever. You now have any number of options within the time it takes for a quick filter. You could even decide to rebrand your entire family with a new temporary identity. Just search the list for one where their kids and yours are the same age and it's done.

The inclusion of bank details IMO are far more worrying, which is the parents rather than the kids, but it doesn't take much imagination to see where the child details could come in handy.
 
dynamicv said:
You are Alistair Darling and I claim my £10 😀
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Damn, caught!!! £10 on it's way, sending with TNT, should be with you one day...

dynamicv said:
It normally takes effort to find the information on each child. With this database you instantly get millions to choose from. Say you want to take the identity of a 13-year old girl from Birmingham of a particular race, for whatever. You now have any number of options within the time it takes for a quick filter. You could even decide to rebrand your entire family with a new temporary identity. Just search the list for one where their kids and yours are the same age and it's done.

The inclusion of bank details IMO are far more worrying, which is the parents rather than the kids, but it doesn't take much imagination to see where the child details could come in handy.
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Again, people are assuming that the day has gotten into the hands of criminals and they have broken (although doubt it would take long) the passwords and encryption on the disks. If somebody wanted to do what you described, in any city not just my home town (yes I noticed it) it is a fairly easy process.

I agree, if the details are in the hands of the less law abiding then parents should worry, but not to the degree that people seem to be.
 
scotthayes said:
I agree, if the details are in the hands of the less law abiding then parents should worry, but not to the degree that people seem to be.
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I think it's less these actual disks that have people worried, but more that we now know about the complete lack of data security implemented at HMRC. An employee should never be able to just export an entire database of personal information to CD. Even if the IT system allows it (which it shouldn't), there should be sufficient managerial oversight to ensure that it is only done under the strictest possible conditions.

Right now I'm wondering how many backup tapes they use on an annual basis and whether they are all accounted for, or do their computers allow iPods to just plug in and transfer data off. The possibility for fraud in a department that has that little data control is enormous, especially with the data they deal in.
 
dynamicv said:
An employee should never be able to just export an entire database of personal information to CD. Even if the IT system allows it (which it shouldn't), there should be sufficient managerial oversight to ensure that it is only done under the strictest possible conditions.
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Indeed, something like exporting the entire database and burning to disc is something that only Alistair Darling himself should be able to authorise.

Even then, you just flat out shouldn't be able to do what they've done at all. Any information transfers should be done over some sort of secure electronic means.
 
edesignuk said:
Indeed, something like exporting the entire database and burning to disc is something that only Alistair Darling himself should be able to authorise.

Even then, you just flat out shouldn't be able to do what they've done at all. Any information transfers should be done over some sort of secure electronic means.
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Nah!
That takes too much time.

Booking the secure computer, phoning the other end to make sure their there, turning the keys, typing in the codes, waiting for the transfer, calling the other end again to make sure they got it...

Or sit some muppet down with a stack of CDs/DVDs and say:

"Burn all that data!"

Which would an efficient Gov dept do?
 
edesignuk said:
I'm very sorry bartelyb, I was a fool. Obviously you'd go with option B.

<slaps forehead>
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Also if we used sophisticated, and more to the point expensive, equipment we'd be wasting tax payers money!


I guess you were directing that at me, rather than my twisted alterego... 😛
 
The more I think about this the more it annoys me. How the hell can something like this happen? How can a mistake this huge be made so easily?
 
iBlue said:
The more I think about this the more it annoys me. How the hell can something like this happen? How can a mistake this huge be made so easily?
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Although not related, this brings up the same kind of "how the **** can this happen" feelings as when the US accidentally flew nuclear war heads across the country violating an important treaty.

25m peoples records are important like nukes are important, you'd think the utmost care involving both would be applied in dealing with either.

Any government, from which ever party and which ever nation are all just incompetent.

It's not the Ministers fault this happened, he didn't do it, but the fact is the ability for this to even happen shouldn't have been there, and that does fall down to him.
 
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