Benefit discs threaten new data scare
Kablenet.com
Published: 04 Dec 2007 08:37 GMT
The Department for Work and Pensions on Monday was awaiting the return of two discs, potentially full of benefits claimants' data, that left its offices a year ago.
A DWP spokesperson told GC News that it was investigating claims that an ex-contractor had held two discs with thousands of benefit claimants' details for more than a year. The contractor told the News of the World that she forgot to return them after she stopped working for the DWP a year ago.
It has been reported that the DWP discs are unencrypted and contain names, addresses, dates of birth and National Insurance numbers. It has also been suggested there could be up to 9,000 names on each disc. However, the DWP spokesperson said that it could not confirm whether this was accurate until it had checked out the discs itself. He said that they were being sent over on Monday by courier.
"Until we get them in we can't confirm anything. It doesn't seem implausible, although it seems that customer details haven't been compromised," he said.
The latest scare comes less than two weeks after it was announced that two child benefit discs containing the personal details of 25 million people have gone missing.
In a statement, the DWP said: "We take the security of customers' data extremely seriously. Although there is no indication that any customers' data was compromised by this incident, we are investigating and will ensure safe return of the information."
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