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Friday 4 July 2008

Live by the sword ...


One of the Daily Mail's laptops was stolen - with thousands of personal and financial details on it. As noted, only, in The Guardian and ComputerWorld, funny that.
Dear Sir/Madam

Unfortunately one of the company's laptops has been stolen. The contents included personal data, some of which related to you. The laptop was password-protected.

We are writing to you as quickly as possible to alert you to the fact that the theft has happened and to inform you of the data types lost, so that you can take appropriate action.

In your case, your name, address, bank account number and bank sort code were the sensitive information lost. We suggest you should take two steps:

1. contact your bank to ensure that it is alerted to the loss of the data, and so that it can advise you on any possible security issues and on any steps that it would be advisable for you to take in order to minimise the risk of any consequent loss occurring;

2. consult at the government website http://www.identity-theft.org.uk for advice on avoiding or dealing with identity theft.

The likelihood is that this theft was carried out in an opportunistic manner by a thief who will not realise that there is any personal data on the laptop and who may just erase what is on the hard disk in order to disguise the fact that the laptop is stolen. We have, of course, notified the police of the theft of the laptop and are talking to the Office of the Information Commissioner about what has happened.

On behalf of the company, I would like to offer my sincere apologies for any annoyance and inconvenience to you that this breach of security may cause. I can assure you that we take security of personal data very seriously and have, since this incident, which was inadvertently caused by a technical issue, already further strengthened procedures.
Yours faithfully
M J Hindley
Group Finance Director
Nothcliffe Media Limited

Wonder if this'll shut them up about the 'incompetence' of others? Ya'think?

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