Wednesday 21st November,
2007
Government Loses 25 Million Identities. What You Can Do To Protect Yourself
Adam Pegley, www.idcardandyou.co.uk
Government Loses 25 Million Identities. What You Can Do To Protect Yourself
Adam Pegley, www.idcardandyou.co.uk
On the 20th November 2007, Alistair Darling announced that HMRC (Revenue and Customs) had lost the identities of 25 million people in the UK, half the population. These included the details of all families receiving Child Benefit, childrens identites, national insurance numbers, and bank details. With the exception of biometric data, the information constitutes the key details required for the National Identity Register (Identity Card scheme).
You can take steps now to minimise the risks this has caused:
- Remove any personal details on-line social networking sites (e.g. FaceBook, MySpace, Webshots). Pay particular attention to any mention of details your might have also used for bank/credit card security questions. These can be used in conjunction with the lost details to commit fraud. Examples of these are:
- Mothers maiden name
- Pets name
- Best friends name
- Favourite or memorable place
- First car
- The Govt. lost both yours and your childrens details, check with your children if they have posted similar ancilliary details in any public sites and remove these too
- If you have used any of the details for internet passwords for bank accounts (e.g. permutations of birth date, childs name and date, etc), go and change the password now
- Check bank, credit card statements for October and November for any unusual activity. Keep checking through December and January as Christmas is a period of peak activity when credit card fraud is more likely to occur
- Be especially wary of any unsolicited calls which require you to confirm personal details. These may be unexpected calls from banks, telesales people, or calls informing you that you have one a competition
- Check that you receive your bank and credit card statements over the coming months. Look out for letters containing bills or credit refusals that that you never purchased or applied for. Missing letters may be a sign of fraud as mail is redirected by the fraudster
- To avoid future risk to your identity - oppose the biometric passport and identity card schemes. Both require the building of a large government-controlled database which will hold information in excess of that lost by HMRC.