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UK Bank Laptop Stolen With 11M Customer Records

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the easy-come-easy-go dept.

daveewart writes "BBC News reports that the UK Building Society Nationwide has admitted that a laptop containing account records of more than 11 million customers has been stolen from an employee's home. This story raises a number of worrying questions: The theft happened three months ago, why has the news only just been made public? Why was it possible (indeed, why was it necessary at all) to put data relating to their entire customer base on an employee's laptop stored at an employee's home? Why was the information on the laptop not encrypted?"

5 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Why, why, why? by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 3, Funny
    Obviously, the UK Building Society Nationwide does not read Slashdot, otherwise they would have known about the risks.

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    You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
  2. It is not often I say . . . by Don_dumb · · Score: 3, Funny

    Thank god I have only £30 in my Nationwide account.

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    If this were really happening, what would you think?
    1. Re:It is not often I say . . . by pr0digy25 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Thank god I have only £30 in my Nationwide account.

      Or is that *had* in your account? :)

  3. Re:worrying questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Everyone should come up with two large prime numbers p and q the moment they're born, state p*q for the birth certificate, and compute arbitrary cube roots mod p*q in their head to prove their identity.

  4. Re:worrying questions by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 2, Funny

    In my defense, at that time, I had negligible real-world experience to speak of and was attempting to single-handedly reverse engineer, repair and extend a huge mess that looked like it had been written by a secretary. I think they migrated the db from Access with a wizard and then poked around looking for ways to make it worse.

    The idea of not using "live data" in that particular case was a bit of a joke.

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    -1 Uncomfortable Truth