The other week I posted about Stephen Ladyboy's admission that the DVLA sells public data to third parties when requests for it come in. The implication of his response is that there is a massive potential for information leak from the DVLA database to third parties.Given the recent news about papers using detective agencies which illegaly extract info from sources including the DVLA, and the Home Secretary's proposal to use the DVLA database as one of the ID card source databases, the revelation that thrid parties can access the ifnromation so easily is distrubing.
At the time, Ladyboy said that the DVLA "does not collate the number of such transactions", however, yesterday he conceded that it does collate how many requests for information from private companies and individuals it receives - but it will cost too much to tell us how how many of these it rejects (convenient as ever).
The answer is staggering. Between November 1st 2006 and Decemebr 31st 2006, the DVLA received 184,483 requests for data from the UK Vehicle register from private companies and private individuals. That is well in excess of 3000 requests every day for info that can be easily used for ID theft purposes. Don't worry though, the ID card scheme will be very secure. They have "safeguards"!
7 comments:
Is it a Freudian slip or is it a deliberate ploy to call him "Ladyboy"?
Is that clip on YouTube yet>
Not sure why this is such a big deal. Plenty of people and companies have a legitimate reason in finding out who owns a particular vehicle, for which they are able to contact the DVLA and pay a free - e.g. if you operate a private carpark. It is not as if the DVLA are selling credit card details...
they're giving enough information to help people to get credit cards. That is the point.
Curly
You obviously don't watch 18Doughty Street
it's deliberate as I said in my post about it, I'm puerile and childish.
My partner is a solicitor. She has been using this DVLA service since she started work. Example: Man on Motorbike is cut up by car driver, probably on hand held mobile (! made that bit up), and both he and his big BMW bike, not sourced on Dorset coast are pretty mashed up. Witnesses hand the biker their details but none hand the road hog anything except old fashioned looks. Although they will go on to claim they had no part in causing the serious damage there is no damage whatsoever to the car and so no insurance claim and no route to the driver's iD. So, it's a case of £2.50 to the DVLA and some chance of justice. Is Dizzy now proposing that long standing arrangements for such cases are stopped? What level of abuse do you think there is? It is a case of balancing the very clear benefits with some of the less clear and possibly imaginary disbenefits. If every enquiry were logged and service users registered then any and all cases of abuse could be easier to deal with. But, er, that's more red tape and officialdom and the cost might double too.
Will blog this.
I am pointing out a massive potiential for Identity Theft in a system that is clearly weak, a system that is supposedly also going to form part of our ID cards database.
We are currently told about the need to protect ourselves against identity theft. Yet in the same breat it is clear that the Government has weak safeguards against it themselves.
The data that the DVLA holds is not theirs, or the Government's, it is ours. We have a right to know that data is treated securely, it is clear it isn't.
Why do you insist on claiming I am proposing things?
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