Roland Perry wrote:

the data (or rather the sheer quantity of it) is what made people take
note, and realise the potential

Although there's almost no "potential" at all in the data that's been
leaked. Makes a good scare story, though.

There is massive potential. Even if there were not enough on its own to
commit fraud (and in reality there was plenty - how much info do you
need to setup a direct debit?), possession of it enhances the value of
any other previously low value information you can acquire since there
is now a very good possibility of being able to match up your new
information with one of the 25m entries that were lost.

Also think of the extra information that could be generated with a
little bit of "applied inference"... You have bank account details,
name, address, NI details etc, what else would you like? Mothers maiden
name? Fair chance you could guess that for a good proportion of the
cases where the parents surnames don't match and the mothers title is
Miss. With 25m records to play with, you are going to be able to guess
right for a good few hundred thousand records.


--
Cheers,

John.

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