25 million identities left unprotected in the UK

Posted by Joe on December 18th, 2007

Over 25 million British citizens have been exposed to potential identity theft in what very likely may be one of the largest single data breaches ever.

Two CDs including names, addresses, bank account information and National Insurance numbers (similar to our Social Security numbers here in the United States) were misplaced by a government employee. While no immediate cases of identity theft have been reported, this information is obviously very sensitive and could cause major problems if it falls into the wrong hands.

The Gartner Group estimates that it could cost over $500 million for banks in the UK to take the precautions needed (such as closing impacted accounts) to prevent further identity theft threats. According to Gartner analyst Avivah Litan, these precautions are important given the sensitivity of the information that was lost:

"The type of data lost could be enormously valuable to identity thieves and other criminals, who could, for example, use stolen account numbers to take over bank accounts. This is why bank account numbers typically sell on the U.S. black market for as much as $400, compared with $5 or less for credit card numbers."

Could a data breach of this magnitude happen here in the United States? In a word- Yes! Hundreds of thousands of US citizens are left vulnerable to identity theft each year due to these types of data breaches which are typically the result of not following mandated protocols for handling sensitive data.

TrustedID, one of the providers listed in our in-depth identity theft prevention service comparison, tracks these types of breaches closely through their Security Breach Alerts. We encourage you to check it out on their blog.

We strongly believe that the best preventative measure that any consumer can take is to sign up for an identity theft protection service. We have reviewed all the major providers and compared them head to head as a resource for our readers.