Bank customers' details are sold on ebay!!

Lost data: Bank details and personal information were sold on a computer on eBay

Computer hard discs containing 1 million sets of bank details was bought from ebay for just $35! This really a shock for the public because they afraid will become victims of fraud.In this incident information including the bank account numbers, phone numbers, mothers' maiden names and signatures of 1 million customers of American Express, NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland were reportedly found on the computer.

HOW IT CAN HAPPEN?
Initially the computer had belonged to data processing company Mail Source, part of Graphic Data, a firm that holds financial information for organisations which was originally used at the firm's archive centre in Shoeburyness, Essex and the machine had been removed from the company's secure storage facility in Essex and sold on the internet auction site. Accidentally, Andrew Chapman, an IT manager from Oxford, bought the computer and found the information on the computer's hard drive.

WHAT IS THE CONSEQUENCES?
This incident put the public into trouma. As their personnal information such as names, addresses, sort codes and account numbers, credit card numbers and security data such as mothers' maiden names are expose to others. It makes public lose confindent and it seems that there is a serious leakage in securing these information.

WHAT STEPS ARE TAKEN BY THOSE PARTIES?
According to the spokesman for Mail Source, which owns Graphic Data, put the situation down to an 'honest mistake'. Now,they already found out employee who took the server and sold it, but they believe that it was an honest mistake and was not intentionally act to sell it without the server being cleared.'They also stress that this is an isolated incident and are investigating how the server was removed and sold.'This is a very unfortunate incident and they are taking measures to ensure it will never happen again.'

Besides that, RBS, NatWest and American Express are analysed the data and will contact customers once they have analysed the data at risk.

Futher, The Information Commissioner's Office is investigating an apparent breach of the Data Protection Act.
A spokesman said: 'A data breach is very serious. Our investigation will look at the circumstances of how this happened, and we will be seeking an urgent explanation from Graphic Data to establish what has gone wrong and the steps that are being taken to prevent a similar incident occurring".

MY OPINION
I think that this is an honest mistake that happen unintentionally. However in my opinion in this 21st century , it is hard for us to delete emails or documents as it is usually very easy to retrieve them and in most circumstances we can even buy a software on the internet for £25 that will retrieve almost anything, unless the computer has been totally wiped or the hard drive is destroyed. So i hope that those parties will not repeat this kind of mistake again.


LINKS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1049121/Government-probe-launched-details-million-bank-customers-sold-eBay.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7581540.stm

http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=18894