Thursday 27 May 2010

Government Data Loss Of The Week

From the BBC:

The private financial details of up to 50,000 people who claim tax credits have been mistakenly sent out in the post by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

Claimants were sent their annual tax credit award notice, along with personal details of other claimants. One woman from Hyde in Greater Manchester has told the BBC her letter included her neighbour's earnings. She also got the bank sort code and the last four digits of the bank account number of another claimant. The HMRC has said the mistake was caused by a printing error and it will be apologising to all the people affected.

3 comments:

JuliaM said...

HMRC again..? So much for learning lessons!

Mark Wadsworth said...

JM, they have learned their lesson. They lost that CD with everybody's details on it a couple of years ago and nothing terrible happened - or not to them, at least.

Pogo said...

Well, it's an improvement - this time they only lost 50,000 records rather than all of them. :-)