25m personal records lost by HMRC

I can not quite believe this on the BBC but HMRC posted a couple of disks with over 25mil personal records to the NAO.

They did not send it recorded delivery and the data has been lost.

Words just fail me ...

When you look at all of the legislation dumped on this industry about the nature of information collected and used - they can not even keep their own house in order.

Comments

[Craig Stead]

Totally agree - and if this situation wasn't bad enough,it also appears that the data sent via Royal Mail (2nd class post probably...) wasn't even encrypted as standard practice governs.

http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2203907/darling-admits-hmrc-lost

[Sam Michel]

The only part of this story that surprises me, is that anyone's surprised by how bad Royal Mail are.

They even manage to lost post that's sent to our PO Box i.e. no delivery outside the sorting office required.

Despite lots of threats of action, I still haven't heard of the Information Commissioner every taking any serious action.

And if this story concerns you, imagine what it'll be like when the government has an electronic version of your fingerprints and other biometric data.

There's an amusing and slightly scary look into the science behind it, in The Guardian's Bad Science Column:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/nov/24/idcards.homeaffairs