When it comes to personal data, 2008 has been a pretty bad year. Dozens of memory sticks seem to have turned up in pub car parks with increasingly sensitive personal data in increasingly large volumes. Reading the popular press you could be forgiven for assuming every second hand laptop or server on eBay was sold without getting its hard drive cleaned. Much of the anxiety has been directed at large retailers or government departments, but today’s news about the leak of some 12,000 BNP names onto a blog feels like the first major act of political support sabotage. Tonight’s news in the UK has been packed with stories about the supporters of our extreme right wing party and who their include. It’s a stark reminder that no personal data is entirely secure and that security is only as strong as the weakest link. Scratch at the surface and it seems like the real problem is that most organisations still don’t pay enough attention to protecting the data of people who have shared it.
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