How safe is your personal data!

It's going to get worse I can assure you! Get ready for the onslaught from publishing houses and print media owners.........they are desperate to capture and use data but most have the most hap-hazard ways of collecting it's scary!
I worked in the data marketing industry for 10 years before setting up MagnifyB and the tactics, mistakes and ****-ups that large companies make with data is unbelievable.

Yep, it's getting worse all right

"The Yorkshire building society has admitted thousands of customers were exposed to potential loss when a laptop computer was stolen.

The unencrypted laptop was stolen in April from the offices of the Chelsea building society, which the Yorkshire had just taken over."

BBC News - Stolen laptop held customer data, admits Yorkshire

Unencrypted customer data on a laptop.... and they wonder why we are all paranoid!!

....and that's not including the personal data people are freely supplying via the social media sites (facebook etc) without realising the potential consequences.

See that happen all the time. People go on vacation, and first thing they want to do is post what time they are leaving, when they will be back - and do updates while they are away.........from home (which of course makes them an easy mark for burglars to break into their home and steal their belongings).

With the social media portion put to one side for a second....

Is it really getting any worse or is it just that more and more of these stories now get into the press because people now know what identity theft is?

This has been going on for donkeys years, ever since there were banks or masons and wot not. I bet the first person that ever made a list of people lost it at some stage.

At some stage the kids at school are going to have to take a "social media" class, teaching them what they can and should never talk about online.

True, and it is the same argument as "is crime worse now than it was 30 years ago, or is better recorded/publicised etc"

But the problem these days is better technology. We have a huge rise in the growth of data storage, management methods, with much lower costs. Technology is introduced much quicker than slow lumbering corporate security policy, which always plays catch up, and seems to follow the stable door approach. End user education is always one of the last cogs in the security wheel.

Just think, you can now have the equivelant of a room of filing cabinets of customer data on a USB pendrive.

Then publish that instantly across a network potentially accesible by millions.

As opposed to Mavis the cleaner in 1936, stealing a manila folder of 50 clients and flogging it to "Harry the fence" down the pub.

The Data Protection act has now "upped" the maximum fine for contravention to a massive possible

Alrite, I hear people are getting busted for loosing customer information and sorts, but what about people who knowingly and voluntarily are shredding out personal info in SNS's? Shouldn't that be posing threat as well? Your take on this folks, Malok and mrb?

I agree totally but the words "knowingly and voluntarily" sort of shift all responsibility for shelling out this information onto the individual.
However I reckon that if this data is then stored ,someone, somewhere is responsible for insuring that it then gets safely and securely destroyed and if this were not to happen then there could be a possible breach of the data protection act !!