HM Revenue & Customs has apologised to investment management firm UBS Laing & Cruickshank for the disappearance of a computer disc containing details of some of the company’s Personal Equity Plan investors, according to the BBC.

Details stored on the CD included names, addresses, account numbers and PEP values. It was sent to HMRC in late April and outsourced for processing to a contractor, but has now disappeared.

The disclosure follows a string of high profile privacy breaches in the US, including the loss in transit of computer back-up tapes holding information on up to 600,000 Time Warner current and former employees, and the disappearance of backup tapes containing the credit card information of 1.2 million federal workers by Bank of America.

Copyright © 2005, OUT-LAW.com

OUT-LAW.COM is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons.

Related stories

• Information Commissioner faces MP grilling (4 December 2007)
• Taxman wrongly fines 10,000 UK businesses (17 January 2006)
• Revenue weighs up Arctic Systems appeal (10 January 2006)
• HMRC slams tax credit portal shut (5 December 2005)
• SpyMedia: More Austin Powers than James Bond (25 October 2005)
• Two-factor banking (19 October 2005)
• Citibank admits: we've lost the backup tape (7 June 2005)
• Backup tapes are backdoor for ID thieves (29 April 2005)
• Ralph Lauren, HSBC in data breach debacle (15 April 2005)
• LexisNexis data breach far worse than reported (13 April 2005)
• Big company, crap security (8 March 2005)