HSBC has said that its life assurance customers have no
reason to worry about a disc that went missing four weeks ago
containing some personal details of 370,000 customers.
The bank has admitted that the disc had gone missing, but said
the data on the disc was
password
protected and was of little use to potential fraudsters
anyway.
"The data disc lost by HSBC contains no address or bank account
details for any customer, and would therefore be of very limited,
if any, use to criminals," said the bank in a statement.
"The data, which was password-protected, includes names, life
insurance cover levels, dates of birth and whether or not a
customer smokes. There is nothing else that could in any way
compromise a customer and there is no reason to suppose that the
disc has fallen into the wrong hands," said HSBC.
The bank has informed the FSA and an investigation will be
carried out.The FSA said that it expects the firms it regulates to
have systems in place to reduce the risk of information security
breaches.
This is another incident of a computer disc containg the
personal details of customers being lost by an organisation. The
most notable recent incident was when
Her Majesty's Customs & Revenue lost the details of 25 million
claimers of child benefit.