The Australian Taxation Office have admitted that a disk with the tax details of thousands of people has gone missing.
What do you do if you’re the ATO? Obviously, you put the details of hard paying taxpayers on an unencrypted CD and then you lose it.
Officials from the ATO have admitted that they lost the disk, containing the details of thousands of taxpayers, and those affected were only notified after three weeks.
Apparently the name, address, and super fund tax file numbers for 3122 people were lost in transit.
Reportedly, the ATO failed to inform people of their missing details in the hope they could recover the CD before they had to notify victims.
The courier company responsible for the missing CD have not been named, and no victims have taken up the ATO’s offer of a new TFN. The company did, however, have the security clearance to transport an unencrypted CD.
“I am concerned that this parcel containing taxpayer information has failed to be delivered,” Tax Commissioner Michael D’Ascenzo said in a statement. “Even though the courier believes the parcel is still within their warehouse facilities.”
It’s still undecided if the ATO will change their practices to encrypt data for transport, though.
Source:
The Australian
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