Banking news
Your bank details: lost in transit
21 November, 2007
Millions of families are having to make urgent checks on their bank accounts following the biggest security blunder in history.
Personal details of 25 million Brits has been lost by the Whitehall department responsible for all tax and benefits.
The details, stored on computer disks, included names, addresses, dates of birth, Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance numbers and bank or building society account details.
The staggering scale of the loss means information on senior politicians, police officers and leading industrialists will be included in the missing data, which contains records on nearly half the UK's 60.5 million population. MPs gasped as Chancellor Alistair Darling revealed the scale of the loss in an emergency statement to the Commons.
The Metropolitan Police is now leading the hunt for the two password-protected discs and trying to discover how they went astray in transit from benefit headquarters in Newcastle to the National Audit Office (NAO) in London.
How did it happen?
A junior official from HM Revenue and Customs had sent the discs to the National Audit Office at the NAO's request on 18 October by the HMRC's internal post, run by the courier firm TNT, even though it was in clear breach of the department's rules governing the release of such sensitive information and may have been in breach of data protection regulations.
The NAO, realising it had not received the data, ordered a further copy to be sent by HMRC. This time it was sent by registered post and did arrive.
Darling told the Commons: "Our priority is to find this data. Searches continue to be carried out, including of the HMRC and NAO premises. Staff are being interviewed but so far the missing data has not been found."
Fighting fraud
The details that have been ‘lost in transit’ are those that families are regularly being warned by the Government not to reveal to potential fraudsters. And they would be worth a fortune on the black market.
No wonder recent research showed that many Brits do not trust big institutions to keep our personal information safe.
The Canvasse Opinion survey found that 34 per cent of us do not trust insurance companies, 33 per cent think Internet retailers aren’t secure and 32 per cent believe that government cannot be relied on to safeguard the data that can be used to impersonate us, borrow money in our names – and ruin our lives.
Get a free copy of your credit report here
How to protect yourself
Check your bank statements carefully
With your account data and basic personal information, criminals could try to get hold of your money. If you spot any unfamiliar transactions, tell your bank immediately and explain the circumstances.
Look at your credit report
The information in the Child Benefit Agency records is enough for a criminal to apply for loans, credit cards and even mortgages in your name – as well as other forms of credit such as mobile telephone and catalogue accounts. Your credit report lists all your credit commitments and recent applications for credit, so you can instantly see if someone has been trying to use your ID and put a stop to problems before they can develop.
Minimise the information you post on social networking sites
Organised gangs are now focusing on ID fraud as a profit centre and they know that many people give away useful snippets that could be passwords or key dates giving access to your bank and card accounts. Edit out the names of pets, mother’s maiden name, where you went to school and anything else you might use as a password or PIN.
Watch out for hoax calls, letters or e-mails
Taking advantage of your distress in the wake of a data breach, criminals may call, e-mail or write pretending to need further information in order to protect you. In fact, they hope to rip you off more thoroughly – so don’t give away information to people you do not know. Check with organisations that might have a genuine reason for contacting you before you part with your data.
Ensure that your bank and credit card account passwords do not relate to the data that could be compromised Many of us tend to use details such as children’s names and memorable dates as passwords to protect our bank and credit card accounts. Fraudsters are likely to make a good guess at these passwords which will give them access to your finances for further theft and much more. Make sure you update your passwords on a regular basis and use unique words that do not relate to data that could be compromised in a data breach.
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