Yet more personal data goes missing

Posted in 'Identity Theft' by Barry Stamp

07 April 2008

HSBC has lost a computer disc with the insurance details of 370,000 of its customers.

Almost a month ago the disc was being couriered from HSBC’s life insurance divisional offices in Southampton to its reinsurance company but despite all search efforts it has failed to surface.

The disc, which was password protected, but not encrypted, contained names, dates of birth, policy numbers, whether the customer is a smoker or not, and levels of insurance cover, but no address information or bank account details.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has been notified. The FSA is expected to follow the precedent it made when it fined Nationwide Building Society £1m for a similar loss of data, though such fines have not been imposed by other bodies on governmental losses such as the HM Revenue & Customs debacle.

In contrast to the HM Revenue and Customs loss of two discs, the data contained on the HSBC disc is not sufficient to be a threat of any sort to HSBC customers.

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