As Oscar Wilde once wrote, almost:
"To lose one set of discs is careless, to lose seven is downright fuckwitted!"
It beggars belief, but the fuckwits in HMRC have announced that yet another set of data has in fact been lost.
This time the "professionals" in Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs have admitted losing the personal details of over 6,500 people claiming pensions.
The details were lost at an office of HMRC in Cardiff, after a data cartridge went missing in September. The cartridge had been sent to the Cardiff office by Countrywide Assured, a life assurance and pensions company.
Details on the cartridge included names, addresses, national insurance numbers and pension contributions, according to Graham Kettleborough, chief executive officer of Chesnara, the parent company of Countrywide Assured.
The cartridge was signed for when it reached the office, but was subsequently mislaid. However, the spokesperson insisted that, because the information on the data cartridge can only be accessed by a mainframe computer, the risk to the individuals involved is "very low".
Oh, so that's alright then!
These fuckwits have no idea what the hell they are doing.
Why have then not been fined and sent to trial for negligence?
HMRC said in a statement on Tuesday:
"We are taking this loss extremely seriously and have done everything possible to locate the data cartridge. We would like to apologise to all those affected."
As I have said before, a class action should be taken out against HMRC by all those who have had their personal security compromised by HMRC's negligence.
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You can run the mainframe OS on a PC these days. If its a modern data cartridge its entirely possible to read it on a PC, and if its one of the older type (3480/3490) there are PC-attached drives to read them too though they are rare and hard to find.
ReplyDeleteNot *that* rare - I have a couple sculling around...
ReplyDeleteA decade later is HMRC any better at protecting data? Accounts of an HMRC manager unlawfully disclosing confidential information and sending their boyfriend round to the home of an HMRC employee, in order to drive them out of the department, would clearly indicate things have not changed.
ReplyDelete