Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information. - Kurt Vonnegut
I lose things, my mind mostly. The last thing was a pair of headphones and I have no idea where they went, considering they were attached to my mp3 player when I last saw them , then later that night were no longer there was confusing enough for me.
Losing small items is one thing, but for the life of me I cannot understand how someone would lose a computer hard drive with details of three million UK driving test candidates on it.
We are constantly urged to be careful the way we part with our information, because someone could be easily going through your rubbish and find out personal details (but enough about my battles with the paparazzi!) and also that there is a great deal of information that cannot be released under the data protection act. I understand both of those things, any kind of fraud is dangerous and with technology as advanced as it is, someone could easily convince others that they were you; they may even convince you of that.
Apparently the candidates name, address, telephone number, the fee paid, the test centre, and email address are all available in this hard drive. Now maybe it will be hard to gain access to, but that seems unlikely given that it was being carried around in America at the time, even though the British government has stated that the information was not readily accessible or usable by third parties.
This news only comes a few weeks after the revelation that 25 million people’s details on computer discs were lost by HM Revenue. No matter what reward is offer in these cases, there is someone that can benefit from it and make a lot of money in the short term. Fraud is really a short term game, the idea being to bleed every account dry that they can gain access to before moving on.
No matter what the British Government say I am sure there will be people who will be not be prepared to put their trust in them to look after any more private information.
Some would say now is the worst time of year for it to happen but to be honest, any time of year that this happens is always going to be a painful process. I can only hope that the information obtained on these files does not fall into the wrong hand, perhaps it’s too late.
Monday, December 17th, 2007 and is filed under Thoughts & Questions, Views on News.
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