Martin Waller of Times Online writes:
Boots is the latest company to be embarrassed by the loss of confidential information after a drug addict stole a back-up tape with details of customers to whom the company had sold dental insurance. Boots is blaming Medisure, the insurer, which is blaming the security firm that was transporting the tape. No one is saying much more, and the whereabouts of the tape, or indeed why it should have attracted the interest of an opportunistic thief, is unclear.
The thief was caught on CCTV. The pharmacist and the insurer have written to an unspecified number of customers reassuring them that the data, including dates of birth and bank account details, are inaccessible without specialist machinery. As The Register, the online IT magazine, points out acidly: “That’s all right then, because surely there are no ties between thieves in this country and hackers in, for example, the former Soviet bloc?â€
Source – Times Online