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Missing Hard Drive Spurs Data-Theft Fears In Canada

Posted by timothy on from the get-your-new-ehdentity dept.

DevNull writes "A government of Saskatchewan (Canada) hard drive has gone missing, and it contains significant personal data - in fact, the government won't even detail what all is contained in it. Read about it from the CBC. So much for people who think the internet is the cause of all their security fears! Identity theft is the major concern at the moment." B5_geek links to this report on Bloomberg.com which says that "'[t]he information includes names, addresses, beneficiaries, social insurance numbers, pension values, pre-authorized checking information and mothers' maiden names," according to Co-operators Chief Executive Kathy Bardswick

2 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. The Co-Operators by Hadean · · Score: 4, Informative

    The drive contained a list of members, the information above and credit card numbers of members of the Co-Operators Life insurance company.

    Check out this article (Regina Leader Post).

    (OT: Have you noticed that there are more and more threads on Slashdot that has less then 10 comments? Hmmm...)

  2. More Info: by Nos. · · Score: 3, Informative
    SASK CBC. I work about 100 Yards from ISM's building (the folks responsible for the lost drive).

    Some interesting things have been reported in the media around here. Some have said the data was encrypted, and that it was unlikely that anyone could get the data. If it was encrypted with anything recent, it would be near impossible to get the information off of it. If I were talking to the media and new it was encrypted

    It was also mentioned that information was in a database, and the tables couldn't be linked very easily... but who really knows.