Government have lost millions child benefit bank details

Little_Mama

Am I missing something here?

We're being told to be vigilant and check our bank accounts but what about the fact that, if in the wrong hands, they've just potentially given them everything they need to take out credit in our names.

I feel the Government should provide all those affected with the extra protection through Cifas' Protective Registration Service, which will mean they will be extra vigilant and ask further questions of someone trying to take out credit in your name. Apparently it's only £11.75 (which I'd expect the Government ot provide for free to all those affected!) but surely that would bring some peace of mind other than the woolly nonsense of this afternoon.

It's a r*ddy shambles.

LM

James

Some tips if you are in receipt of child benefit:

Check your statements.

Consider rendering your personal inforamtion worthless. Click here. or visit website to download free templates. click here.

or More info click here:

A slight deviation from Martin's warcry "Stuff the fraudsters, before they stuff you".

Mikeyorks

saveaholic68 wrote: »

Apparently the government have lost discs with the bank details of 15million child benefit claimants on them...unbelievable

It's 25M actually .... but that's the number of records. Only about a fifth of those are believed to contain Bank account details. So that's a bit better?:rolleyes:

But I'm struggling to work out how anyone managed to get 25M records (Name [28 characters] / Address (at least 6 x 28chars) / NINO / Bank account etc) - onto 2 x Compact Discs. Without full data compression - would need Harry Potter to achieve that.

And why just blame HMRC? It was NAO who commissioned the data out of the secure environment it's intended to be housed in. They're the arrogant ones who have an upmarket address in Buckingham Palace Road .... and regularly criticise Govt bodies for making errors!

silvercharming wrote:

But as soon as I get that script I'll post details.

In the light of the reason for this thread ..... that is not sensible. It's not 'public domain' data and you should only be using it as part of your job.

benood

25 million people - 7.5m families - ie 7.5m bank accounts! Amazing - apparently bank account details are worth about £100 each on the black market according to the BBC I hasten to add - £0.75 billion, still in comparison to Northern Rock it's small beer.

As for blaming HMRC - well they sent the package, and made it possible for a junior member of staff to send it - spectacular incompetence, presumably the NAO didn't ask for it to be sent in the most insecure way possible, or perhaps it was one of their system tests.... it is the NAO's job to criticise government departments when they stuff up.

I think Silvercharming is suggesting he/she will post details of what they've been told to say to the public - a good idea surely?

aaroncaz

TNT, was the people meant to deliver the disks.

Larumbelle

Gosh, yes, I'll only be posting the information that is to be made public - I'm too lowly to be told anything else anyway - and believe me, I'm very aware of the zillion or so scary laws I would break otherwise!

Chances are the same information will be plastered all over the media, but people like to be told it personally, if you see what I mean. I think tomorrow might be a VERY bad day, and I'm assuming we'll also have to field our regular call work as well.

I think we're just supposed to attepmt to reassure people / be the punchbag. It's such a surreal situation. I really can't imagine they'll tell us anything they haven't told parliament.

fergie19cameron

silvercharming wrote: »

Yes, it's true and they have no idea where the disk is. Bl**dy government AND bl**dy Royal Mail in one go! It's probably slipped down under a conveyor belt somewhere... They have known about it for 2 weeks but it was only announced this afternoon.

I work for a different Gov. department and we are going to take CB calls as they are expecting to be so swamped with calls. We are being given an information script to help us deal with the calls so I will post more info for you when I get it. :mad: It's bad enough having to deal with my own department's c*ck ups, without getting shouted at over other departments'.

I agree, Jo, if ever there was proof that the government can't be trusted to implement ID cards, it's this.

I quite agree with you, i also work for a different department and not only have we got to deal with complaint calls we now have to take calls that relate to a different dept and the people we are speaking to on the phones become angry with us because we don't have info to say if thy will be affected!!!

It really angers me that they sent them by post, especially with all that postal strikes going on!!!!
I think that they should have went there in person to deliver such important disks with so many peoples details on.
They will be sitting in a royal mail warehouse under piles of underlivered mail from te strikes, I think the queen needs to find out what the hell is going on with her revenue!!!!

lapat

mines paid into a savings account that account has just been emptied in the last half an hour into another account i have.....i am not taking any chances at all

Mikeyorks

benood wrote: »

25 million people - 7.5m families - ie 7.5m bank accounts!

No - that's why I went for a conservative 'fifth'. One of the major problems facing the Tax Credit systems designers - was that considerable numbers of potential claimants did not have even basic Bank accounts .. and still do not.

benood wrote: »

As for blaming HMRC - well they sent the package ...... presumably the NAO didn't ask for it to be sent in the most insecure way possible

The point I was making is that NAO asked for it to be sent at all. It's contributory negligence. In this day and age NAO can acquire secure access to the system, from their own London terminals, without the need of the data being prised from the relative security of the home system. If they need to run their own database interrogation tools - as a minimum the names / addresses needed to be anonymised before the data was shipped. And even then it should be secure courier - which neither Royal Mail nor TNT (depending on who you read) offer.

benood wrote: »

I think Silvercharming is suggesting he/she will post details of what they've been told to say to the public - a good idea surely?

No. It's not personal data - but it's confidential data provided by her employer for the purpose of doing her job. If HMRC decide to append the data to their website - and she can provide a link - that's fine as it's then 'public domain'. If not - the data is provided confidentially - and should remain that way.

A_Nice_Englishman

We don't know exactly what the NAO were going to do with the data, but generally speaking data sent outside an organisation should be 'anonymised' - any details which could link a record with a particular individual removed.

We also don't know how the data was encrypted. A password on a zip file, for example, is quite easily cracked. Hopefully it was much stronger encryption, such as this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography

But wouldn't they have told us if the encryption was strong enough not be be broken?