A laptop containing personal details of at least 100,000 pension scheme members has been stolen from an employee of the accountancy firm Deloitte.
The computer held data including names, National Insurance numbers and salaries of Network Rail and British Transport Police pension scheme members. Deloitte said there was a "very low risk" of the details being accessed. The theft, last month, came to light as the Ministry of Defence confirmed data on 100,000 personnel had been lost. Deloitte said it had notified police of the theft, which occurred in a public place, and informed its clients - including BSkyB - which had contacted all affected scheme members. No addresses or bank account details were stored on the machine, Deloitte said. In a statement, the company said the laptop was protected by a number of security measures, including start-up and operating system passwords and data encryption. It said the theft had happened despite employees being issued with guidelines to pay close attention to their laptops in public places. James Jones, education manager with the credit reference agency Experian, said the data on the laptop would not be very useful to anyone trying to commit identity fraud. "Your National Insurance number is no use at all for identity fraud," he said. "The building blocks in the UK of identity are name, date of birth and address - with that information you can probably crack everything else." Source
