Accessing your info
July 11, 2008 by moneypenny
Filed under Finance
As well as accessing the information held by credit agencies on you, banks also store a lot of their own info and recently the safety of this info has come under the spotlight.
Last year a large UK bank was fined £1 million for carelessly failing to safeguard customer info when a member of staff’s laptop was stolen. The theft was pretty routine what angered the officials however, was the fact that the info held on the computer was not even encrypted to prevent Joe Soap in the street accessing it.
A few months later the banking commisioner named and shamed 12 major banks and the post office for carelessly dumping personal information on their clients, in bin bags on the pavements outside their premises. For the majority of people who shred their statements and personal info, this seems a rather blatant breech of trust.
The law states that banks and anyone else who keeps personal info on you are obliged to store it safely and safeguard against the theft of it.
The FSA Financial Services Authority have inspection teams now, as do major banks.
So what do you think about this digital money world readers? Are you using online payment systems in the hope that they handle your info more securely than banks. Do they?
Let us know what you think send us a comment
Moneypenny
Neither is 100% safe. In the digital world of banking you have hackers trying to steal your money and/or identity, whereas in the brick and mortar banking world you have bank employees with hands on access to sensitive personal information. Both worlds need secure storage and transfer of data as well as more honest people!