Some human errors are more dangerous than others. PA News reports:
A data breach which may have put up to 100,000 people at risk of death or serious harm from the Taliban can now be reported more than three years after it took place.
Here the PA news agency looks at the timeline of events in the data breach and how governments responded to it:
– 22 February 2022
A UK Government worker accidentally emails a dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) outside of a secure government system.
He sends the email in an attempt to verify information, believing the dataset to only contain around 150 rows of information. It contains around 33,000.
– 14 August 2023
An anonymous Facebook user posts a small excerpt of the dataset on the social media site.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is notified.
Around 1,800 Arap applicants in Pakistan are sent a warning via WhatsApp by UK officials that their data may have been breached.
Read the remainder of the timeline at The Westmoreland Gazette. What it doesn’t reveal is who the email was sent to or who received it or intercepted it.