Government have lost millions child benefit bank details

rjl0606

just saw on the news they've given out the helpline #, 0845 something, probably a fat lot of good that'll be, and the bstrds still have the nerve to charge us for calling them!!! they should come up with an 0800 number.

kelloggs36

Don't suppose it's listed on https://www.saynoto0870.co.uk!

Larumbelle

Okay, so the script we were given stated pretty much nothing. This is what we got, not word for word of course:

We do not have any more information at present than has already been released to and widely circulated by the media.

All child benefit payments will continue to be made as usual.

There is no suggestion that the missing data has left government property, and there is no need to change your bank details. Your bank will be working closely with 'us' to ensure that your accounts are not compromised.

All recipients will receive a letter confirming these details in due course.

Most of the calls are being outsourced to other government departments.

We DON'T have any more information than is in the media, so there really isn't any point in calling the 0845 number.

Any geographic numbers you might find cannot be recirculated to the next available operator, meaning you will spend even longer on the line.

I do understand how frustrating it is, but there really is no point in calling, not even to vent your spleen, because the chances are you won't even get through to someone from HMRC, just some other low-paid call centre bod with less info than todays Sun holds to defend themself with. Please don't reply to this with vitriol about how stupid and badly-handled this situation is. Believe me, I already know.

At least, rant away, just don't direct it at me

BANANABUS

I bet they ask the question

"where did you last have them?".
"If i knew that then i would have found them!:mad:

thats what i'm always asked when i lose somthing, i've never lost 2 Cd though!

fallen121

HopeElizzy wrote: »

Like most others on this thread I am concerned about the monetry problems associated with the loss of our information.
BUT I am more concerned with the fact that someone has my children's details. If information like this is sold on could it find it's way into the hands of paedophiles? They would have my children's names, addresses, date of birth - I feel like this has endangered my children. I hope I'm over-reacting but I find it very worrying.

Me too....

I actually find the prospect of my Bank details being released less worrying than the knowledge that my daughter's safety has potentially been compromised.

It seems it is perfectly ok for the authorities to put my child's wellbeing in peril without risk of prosecution or censure. I would like to think heads will roll but we all know it won't happen. I am angry because my daughter trusts the grown ups of this world to fight her corner and this clearly hasn't happened here. She can't fight back, she's only a child. But the sad thing is, her parents can't do anything either.

:mad:

spook

blind-as-a-bat wrote: »

Ok to prove my point type in the poem 'Mary had a little lamb into word,save it then open the file with notepad and you get this:-

..snip..

But as the above shows by adding the pass the contents ARE encrypted

That may be true for Word, but it's a matter of terminology. To most IT-literate people "Password-protected" certainly does NOT mean the same as "encrypted". A password protected file may be encrypted, but it may not be. For example, your PC is probably 'protected' by a login password, but that doesn't mean anything on its hard drive is encrypted. Many USB flash drives have a 'password' function but do not necessarily encrypt their contents.

In this case it seems to me very likely that the data wasn't encrypted, or if it was, only weakly. If it was protected by strong encryption with a suitable encryption key I'm sure that the chancellor would have made this abundantly clear. To me the fact that he didn't say anything stronger than 'password-protected' suggests the worst case scenario to me.

spook

fallen121 wrote: »

Me too....

I actually find the prospect of my Bank details being released less worrying than the knowledge that my daughter's safety has potentially been compromised.

It seems it is perfectly ok for the authorities to put my child's wellbeing in peril without risk of prosecution or censure. I would like to think heads will roll but we all know it won't happen. I am angry because my daughter trusts the grown ups of this world to fight her corner and this clearly hasn't happened here. She can't fight back, she's only a child. But the sad thing is, her parents can't do anything either.

:mad:

I suppose it does seem a little irrational but I feel exactly the same way. I will probably change my bank account in the next few days (as I was already considering switching banks anyway), but there's nothing I can do to change my daughter's name, date of birth, address and national insurance number.

Maybe the Govt should pay for new identities for us all. :rolleyes:

heppy23

They were saying on the radio yesterday that the effects of this mess may last for decades.

My worry is that if the info is in the wrong hands it will be sat on and used to commit fraud on our children as they turn 18 and become able to apply for credit etc.

Thanks to encouragement from the government my son will have a decent savings pot, a decent sized child trust fund and a decent pension fund.

He will be a good target for a fraudster.

I think the government should swallow the costs of setting up protective registration on the credit files of all those affected.

seven-day-weekend

I find it difficult to believe that

a) anyone actually downloaded this information onto a disc at all
b) sent it through the internal post

I used to work in Town Planning for a local authority. Most of our stuff was public domain anyway, but there were one or two things that were not.

One was the initial letter and enforcement notice I used to send out to people who had committed a breasch of planning law (although it did become public once it was served).

Although we did actually send some of these by recorded delivery I never entrusted it to the internal post. I would take it to the post office myself. Otherwise it may well get lost for weeks amidst a mountain of undelivered internal post 'overseen' by a schoolkid on work experience (bit of an exaggeration, but you take my point). This in a Civic Centre in a large city.

How anyone could be so lax with CONFIDENTIAL data beats me.

spook

blind-as-a-bat wrote: »

Their is no way the data wasnt encrypted and the chancellor not mentioning it does not prove to the contrary Passworded and encrypted in the case of data on a removable disc such as a CD ARE the same thing so he didnt need to

How strong the encryption is, is the qusestion that needs to be answered as ive already said

Sorry if you took my post the wrong way, I never said you were 'IT illiterate', but I can see that my post could be read that way.

I was simply making the point that the two terms do not mean the same thing, and the fact that people think they do actually causes people to be far more careless about security than they really should. Particularly with regard to companies storing sensitive data on laptops, for example.

Don't forget that politicians are very good at giving an impression that something is a fact, without actually saying anything concrete, so that they don't get caught out later when it turns out they weren't telling the full story. I think it's highly possible that this applies here.