[Dataloss] UK: Standard Life customers are hit by breach in security

[Adam Shostack]

They're just doing this so that their demands for more personal
information don't seem so scary.

Adam


On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 12:58:09AM +0000, lyger wrote:
| 
| (good thing they didn't have only 600 customers... a 50% impact rate would 
| have looked a lot worse in the media...)
| 
| http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=716812007
| 
| STANDARD Life has admitted that up to 300 customers may have been affected 
| by a security breach in which personal information was sent to others by 
| mistake.
| 
| The blunder, described as a "one-off error" in its information systems, 
| caused some customers to receive policy documents meant for others. It is 
| the latest in a series of data protection breaches by big companies.
| 
| [...]
| 
| "Less than 0.2 per cent of our valued investors have been impacted by 
| this. We have acted swiftly to make investors aware of the error."
| 
| A letter explaining the error was sent to hundreds of customers over the 
| weekend.
| 
| It is thought to have affected people recently applying for new ISA 
| policies and the data included names, addresses and policy numbers but not 
| personal financial information, such as income or tax codes.
| 
| [...]
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