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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?"

2 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. a reason to SMILE by cliffski · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Another good reason I use smile (www.smile.co.uk) They have great customer service (best ive encountered), reasonable interest rates, a great,usable website, and are consistantly ranked the top UK bank for security. On top it all, they are an ethical bank who restrict where they invest your cash.
    It amazes me that people still use high street banks. I haven't set foot in a bank in 5 years.

    --
    DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
  2. Suck it up by Toby+The+Economist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, I think it's clear from the repeated stories of millions of confidential files being lost that enough large organisations simply don't understand security enough to get it right.

    However, we all carry on using their services because we're stuffed if we don't - if your university loses your details, what are you going to do? quit? if your morgage is with your bank and they lose your account information, are you going to change bank?

    Because there is basically, when all is said and done, no *real* pain for organisations, for loosing information, there is no *real* need for them to understand security enough for these data losses to stop.

    So suck it up!

    Personally, I'm trying to get out from under. I gave up my mobile phone last week - I do not accept having my mobile phone calls logged for a year. I'm moving over to Tor, because I do not accept having my browsing logged for four days (current UK retention). I'm thinking about getting rid of the phone, too, and moving over purely to encrypted email which will be sent/receieved from my own home-run POP/SMTP server.