It has come to the attention of the media that the leading light of the online auction industry, eBay, recently hosted the sale of a £35 computer with added extras. Unknown to eBay, or the seller apparently, it seems as though a PC from archiving firm Graphic Data has been resold on eBay drawing a top bid of £35. But there were plenty of extras on this one!
The machine was acquired by Andrew Chapman who is an IT manager from Oxford and thankfully he noticed that there was still information held on the machines hard drive. Further investigation revealed the records of over one million people who had applied for credit cards with the Royal Bank of Scotland, at which point Mr Chapman raised the alarm.
The issue is sure to have breached the Data Protection Act which ensures that all firms that hold information of a sensitive nature are obliged to afford their customers a high degree of security. When you consider that the Nationwide Building Society was fined £980,000 by the authorities after a laptop containing customer data was stolen from an employee's home, what kind of penalty can the Royal Bank of Scotland expect?
This highlights the issue of leaving sensitive data on machines which are sold on and the fact that even if files are ‘deleted' there are ways and means of retrieving the data unless it is completely wiped off the hard drive. |
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