Just Another F***ing Quango

Ooh weve never seen this happen before...

And neither know what to do or how to do it

should detail all the names on the computer so we can all make individual complaints to our banks and/or the useless information commissioner (I too found out they are complete and utter waste of space) .

Please Mr Chapman, give us an email address so we can check if we are on the server, or publish the names alone.

Thanks

but as natwest customers, couldn't people have some sort of class action suit against them for miss handling their data?

"We asked the ICO about this and were told that since it knew what information was on the machine, nothing useful could be learnt from it."

That's it? The content of the drive might have already been copied a gazillion times, but that doesn't excuse the attitude of just letting the drive remain "in the wild".

Another nail to the coffin in letting the gov handle ever increasing info on its citizen

I wonder if he put the server on ebay and said exactly what was on the server, how fast would it sell and for how much? And once it sold, how fast would the Bill be on his doorstep? The crux of the problem is that he is trying to do the right thing.

Perhaps an ebay auction that stated:

I will sell to the lowest possible bidder if that bidder is a government agency that, as a condition of its purchase, will investigate how this server could possibly have ended up in my hands and take appropriate action. Otherwise, I will sell to the highest bidder. As the government has no interest in this information to date, and I own the server, I should be able to sell at will with no legal ramifications.

In self defence then one is obliged to give these people false information in order to prevent identity theft. Not that I ever told a bank my real DOB or mothers maiden name but at least now I have a reasonable excuse for my er defensive measures.

He should put the server back up for sale with the information on it. Let's see how valuable the information really is. I'm sure he'd make a profit.

The interesting thing here is, is he comitting any kind of offence by doing that, and it'd be interesting to see whether any of the banks, or goverment data protection organisations step in to stop him, or make him a larger payment offer?

If the banks didn't offer to buy the server back off him, I would be very worried indeed - that would suggest they couldn't care less what happens to the information.

I bet they'd love to have the details of everyone who just lost trust in their bank.

I am sure others would be interested in seeing it possibly they could put it on line for all of us to get a gander since it isn't of any value any more.

So there's this guy with 10^6 sets of bank details, who's made himself known to teh authoriteez but getting hold of the data isn't, like, important? It's not a blues & twos to recover the machine or anything silly like that?

I mean, it could get stolen or anything.

Idle, overpaid and useless.

"As the government has no interest in this information to date, and I own the server, I should be able to sell at will with no legal ramifications."From what little that I have heard on the news the person that put this server on fleabay did not have clear title to this item so neither does the person that purchased it,at least as I understand the law

You'd be one of the lucky ones if your information was on there. In the future, if you ever had any kind of fraud activity on your account, you could sue NatWest because it was probably their fault.

We run a company helping people get their bank charges back, and for our sin have to deal with these muppets on a weekly basis. We get claim forms sent back because from the Financial Ombudsman's service because we haven't put the customers occupation down...sometimes, other times they don't mind.

To my mind the OFT and FSA are the worst, the FST's waiver to the banks last year was the biggest slap in the face to the consumer for a very long time. Apparently they put the waiver in place because customers complaints weren't being handled consistently, only about 99% of customers were getting their charges back to the tune of millions of pounds. Of course the best way to protect the consumer was to put a waiver in place to stop anyone claiming. Of course, the banks are still able to charge even though the OFT have concluded a report in to the fairness of bank charges and the high court have declared they have the right to investigate and impose sanctions.

Of course its not really surprising as most of these regulators are headed up by ex bankers anyway.

You also have banks ignoring the data protection requests. They have 40 days to respond but often don't bother, the ICO isn't interested.

My faith in these organisations is non existent.

... that need to worry; they know where the data is, and is, presumably, safe now.

It's the people possibly listed on the other computer they've lost that need to worry..

Hmm... McCallum You aren't by any chance a Glaswegian McCallum are you? My family is from that part of the world, same surname.

Exec 1:"Ok, we need to think of a way of combatting the credit crunch and persuade people to spend more money"

Exec 2:"I know! Let's sell a couple of computers on ebay containing everybody's bank details. That way, the fraudsters can spend it for them...."

Will:"Why don't we just give the customers what they want, and keep their data secure?"

Exec 1:"Don't be daft Will......THIS is marketing!"

Exec 2:"Yeah, Will!......"

Since about half of all the responses so far have suggested things to do with the box, it might be worth re-iterating John Dougald McCallum's remark...

"From what little that I have heard on the news the person that put this

server on fleabay did not have clear title to this item so neither does

the person that purchased it,at least as I understand the law."

...and referring back to the original article, the ICO's position was basically "return it to Graphic Data". It *is* still their machine, and the bank's data. Given the publicity that (rightly) surrounds this case, Mr Chapman is currently a target for both law enforcement (looking to pin blame on someone if the data starts turning up elsewhere) and organised crime (looking to, er, spread the data elsewhere). If he hasn't already given it back to Graphic Data, he's not much of an IT expert.

The banks actually deal in data that represents money. Because they still have the data they still have the money. But they don't have the data security and for a bank thats supposed to keep money safe that seems very odd. Then it occured to me, they look after the data that represents their own money but if they loose our data that's only our money.

Each day we need to get a bit more control over our own lifes and leave less in the hands of big unaccountable companies. If you entrust your money to someone else then it's nolonger your money, at least in practical terms.

Exactly how is one supposed to live off the grid?

Whilst I was born in the UK, free, owing nothing, I have as yet been unsuccessful finding any way of continuing to exist in that manner.

I wonder why the Police aren't dealing with this matter? From what I have heard (Radio 4 news) the server has pretty clearly been stolen from a secure(!) holding facility whilst awaiting destruction, before being punted on Ebay. I would expect the Police to be taking the stolen goods into their hands as evidence, or for the server to be returned to graphic data, the rightful owners. I would then expect Ebay to fess up any contact details for the person that sold the stolen server to the Police.

Furthermore, I wouldn't expect Graphic Data to be in business in 12 months time, their security has broken down so, I'd imagine their customers will flee like rats leaving a sinking ship. I'd also imagine that the RBS/NW contracts stipulate in pretty explicitly clear text the requirements for data security.

In my experience, the iCO is about as much use as that other well-known body, OFCOM - pretty well nil in my estimation. I have approached both bodies with what I considered to be well-formed, reasoned and legitimate complaints (the details of which I will not bore you with here) and got fobbed off every time. It seems, according to the explanations I have been given, that you could drive a bus through the loopholes in the 1998 Data Protection Act and it`s not worth the parchment it`s written on.

I`ll get me wig.