Government contractor loses confidential data on 12M users

The British government is investigating how a memory stick holding the user names and passwords for a government computer system was lost and later found in a pub parking lot. The memory stick belonged to a government contractor, which stated that an employee had breached procedure by removing the memory stick from the company's premises.

The incident resulted in the temporary shut down of the Gateway website, used by the public to access services such as tax returns, pension and child benefits. It has 12 million regsitered users.

See, "Inquiry into loss of confidential data on 12 million website users," The International Independent, November 3, 2008.