Uk News - Virgin Loses CD Of Customer Bank Data

[GhostShip]

This is not something anyone wants to hear happening at a major ISP comany.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/20/virgin_media_banking_loss/

Virgin Media is conducting an internal inquiry into why 3,000 customers' bank details were burned to a CD which was then lost, it emerged today.
The incident came to light inside the company on 29 May. Virgin Media is part way through individually contacting the people affected, who all signed up in Carphone Warehouse stores nationwide from January this year.

A company spokesman told The Register that transferring sensitive data customer on CD goes against its policy of using secure FTP tranfers. The data on the CD was not encrypted and also included names and home addresses.
Virgin Media emphasised the blunder had been "isolated" and had never happened before. The staff involved in the incident are subject to the internal inquiry.
The firm contacted the Information Commissioner's Office when it discovered the loss and took its advice on how to inform customers.

Unfortunately centralising data always leads in the end to compromisation of that data, its a fact of history that this is always the case, Virgin just happened to be a tiny part of a ever enlarging set of statistics.

[]-[êll.Ôñ.ËÀR'][']-[.]

Could happen to anyone ...just ask HM Revenue and Customs & HSBC  they managed to loose over 27 million peoples details..... quite ironic if you are one of them that has had their details lost 3 times now ehh   

[White Stripes]

i could give you a list (but, for legal reasons, i wont)... of companies that have had data breaches like this... and worse...

they usually dont make it to the news unless the company (virgin in this case) is under the microscope for some reason or another...

long story short... it happenes more than enough to make joe paycheck worry themselves to death... luckily the good companies (yes, they exsist) get on some serious 'damage control' PDQ and help those affected...


...want even more to chew on? ive bought and been given many computers over the years that have had sensitive data on them (company computers issued to the employees) including names, addresses, and even SSN#s ... step one when getting a machine like this is either delete the data with a DOD style 'wiper' program (if the computer has a specialty OS or drivers that simply cannot be found anymore) or reformat and reinstall a new/different OS (usually linux in my case)... but who knows what a more unscrupulus person would do with what they found on that ancient thinkpad they found at the thrift store....