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HM Revenue & Customs Lost Child Benefit Disks which affects over 25 million people

The missing disks includes Worcester residents data like your and your childrens names and dates of birth, your address, your national Insurance number and bank or building society details. This is a serious worry for over 7 million families and 25 million individuals.

Letters have been sent out by HM Revenue and Customs making "personal apologies" and explaining that there is no need to panic and close accounts. The banks have been made aware of the situation and have put extra security measures in place. People are also being comforted by the fact that as with any fraud the banks will give the money back to you. Those security meassures has so far cost the banks £25 million.

People are urged to check bank statements regularly to look for any unsual activity and to change passwords if they use personal data for example your childs date of birth.

There have been reports that someone was paid to steal the data as this is "a criminals dream". The data on those disks is priceless and affects most people in the country. This is of course speculation. Reports have also said that juniors at the office where the data was kept sent the disks to the NAO without using recorded or registered post and they were lost in transit. This was on 18th October, the public were made officially aware on 24th November. HM Revenue & Customs have told families that there "is no evidence suggesting that it is in possession of anyone else" although a police investigation is underway.

This is not the first time mistakes have been made at HM Revenue & Customs. Back in March a junior official at HM Revenue and Customs gave the National Audit Office a full copy of HMRC's child benefit data which was in breach of security procedures. Fortunately this information was later returned. Then in September HM Revenue & Customs sent details to Standard life and in the process lost 15,000 peoples data. In the same month a laptop was stolen which had over 400 peoples ISA details. There are obviously serious security issues within HMRC.  

The Chairman of HMRC, Mr Gray has now resigned.

They have provided a helpline for anyone who is concerned that they may be the victim of bank fraud:

Telephone: 0845 302 1444
(open between 8am & 8pm 7 days a week except christmas day, boxing day and new years day.)