National Identity Theft

I haven't blogged for a while as I have been busy moving house and all the malarky that goes along with it.
I have also discovered the joys of DIY ;) . My latest achievement was laying a wooden floor, what do you think eh? Not bad?

Of course I had to buy the compulsory plasma screen too (to fit in with the wooden floor of course!).

Enough of that anyway. I have also moved from a permanent member of staff to a contractor, more about that later though.

This week you may have noticed that HSBC was caught out allegedly disposing of thier customers details in the common refuse. Not great.

Quoted from The Sunday Mirror:

"In one case bags marked Confidential Papers Only were left on the pavement of a busy London street. In Birmingham, a customer's entire file - including his salary, address and banking habits - were in a bin bag. Another bin in Bristol contained dozens of bank documents and copies of customers' passports."

This could not have come at a worse time as last week was National Identity Theft Awareness Week. http://www.stop-idfraud.co.uk/

According to this site, 21 million of us need to take better precautions about protecting our identity. There is some considerable debate about who really is responsible for protecting our confidential information but at the end of the day, whatever banks and other financial institutions do, we share responsibility for protecting our private data.

10 Do you own a shredder? If <>"yes" goto buy shredder
20 Does your shredder cross cut your documents into unreadable strips? If <> "yes" then take shredder back to shop and buy a better (more expensive!) one
30 Do you shred all your private documents? if <>"yes" gosubroutine 'shred all private documents'.

We have no idea where our rubbish/trash/garbage will end up. Maybe it will end up in a landfill site, maybe not.
Maybe it will be sold to someone else to 'dispose of'.

ID theft is growing. There are known fraudulent tecqniques such as 'Internet assisted account takeover' that SOCA (formerly NHTCU), are not only aware of but are taking positive steps to break.

Make sure you are not one of the unlucky ones.

Happy shredding!