Data, data, everywhere!

Well, the UK government seems to have lost a lot of data.. including mine. I can't quite work out how I feel about this. I know, in some sense, that the chances of me being exposed by this are still relatively small (anyone who has lost stuff in the post may know how unlikely the damn thing is to turn up), but then again all this publicity will almost certainly mean that anyone coming across a couple of discs will check to see what's on them. Ho hum.

I'm also feeling a pinch of sympathy for whoever lost the data in the first place. I worked in a major insurer, alongside colleagues who were manipulating massive amounts of data like this. The problem, as has been pointed out in some areas of the press, is actually a cultural one. It is easy to forget that these details belong to people. That they aren't just bits and bytes, records and extracts. They are bank accounts and addresses, names and dates of birth.

It's bad enough that we don't look after our own data well enough, but when the government (and other organisations) starts handing out lots of it through carelessness, then we really are left hoping rather than knowing that we're safe.