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Updated 8.55pm
MOBILE PHONE SERVICE provider O2, which has some 1.6 million customers in Ireland, has said that a tape that may have contained some of its customers’ personal information has gone missing.
The tape went missing in September 2011 but the potential data breach is only emerging now following consultation with the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC).
The company has insisted that there is a “low risk to customer data privacy”. The DPC said that it is satisfied from its investigation that the level of risk to individuals is “low”.
O2 said that it has been working with the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) since the summer to establish the facts of the case before announcing the incident in a notice posted to its website this evening.
The tape contained what the operator said was a “snapshot of data at a particular moment in time, including files from O2′s internal corporate drives”.
“While it is possible that it could contain some personal data, it is more likely that it simply contained information about O2′s normal business affairs and company information,” a statement said, adding:
While the tape has been lost, it is likely still in an O2 building. As a result we believe there is a low risk to customer data privacy.
The company said that it was informed by its IT partner IBM in the summer of this year that a tape used for routine daily back-up work had been “misplaced” in September 2011.
“While the tape remains unaccounted for it is possible that it has simply been misplaced within an otherwise secure location in O2,” the company said.
A spokesman for O2 told TheJournal.ie that IBM’s failure to notify it of the disappearance until last summer was an issue for the computer company but said that the matter had been “taken up with them”.
He described it as “normal practice” to work with the DPC to establish the facts of the case “to ascertain what the situation is”.
“As soon as we concluded that discussion with the DPC we put the notice up on our website,” the spokesperson said this evening.
O2 has been asked to notify all of its customers as of September 2011 of the matter while the investigation remains ongoing. O2 said that the incident had never happened before.
Its statement on its website added: “We have undertaken a full review of the process around the handling of back-up tapes to ensure this does not happen again.”
The Data Protection Commissioner, Billy Hawkes, told TheJournal.ie this evening that there is still a possibility his office could prosecute O2 for the breach.
“Data breaches by telecommunications companies are subject to prosecution by us under the law so obviously it’s an option that we have available to us, but we’ve not made a decision it yet,” he said.
“But from the point of view of the public as well, we’d like to say that we are satisfied from our investigation that the level of risk to individuals is low in this case.”
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Get rid of that USC shite!
Absolutely! It was supposed to be “temporary!”
USC is 7% for the majority. Some pay nothing else. Tackle the marginal rates instead
Change street lights to LED.
Powerful sayings, don’t be getting ahead of yourself, do you think it’s just as simple as taking out the current lights and replacing them with leds? First off, we’ll have to set up a focus group so that everyone knows what we’re doing ‘going forward’. This focus group should comprise of retired/failed political cretins that have absolutely no background in engineering and probably couldn’t change the fuse in a plug. After several months of agreeing terms with an Led manufacturer in China, Enda decides it probably best instead to ude Denis o Brien’s led manufacturing plant, which he set up two weeks previous.
@Paul
Don’t forget the consultation with the Unions, and the claims that for Health and Safety reasons these new bulbs can’t be handled without proper preparation in the form of a % pay increase, a late start on a Monday and time to go to the Bank on Friday, a one off lump sum payment and finally, an allowance for new socks. Sure until that is all in place, it’ll be strikes and blackouts on the streets.
Dont we already have companies set up that could install the new lights. ESB and airtricity who already maintain the street lights!!!!
There’s a few crap ideas in that list , I have a few that would safe us about 150 million. No bonus for bankers. No pensions for politicians (pay for it yourselfs ya lazy sh.ts) retired or serving, no Irish water .
How would no bonuses for bankers save the Government money?
Maybe arrange for every Irish worker ‘donate’ a pint of blood every month at their place of work and sell it on the open market.
Here’s a good one – stop paying back the banking debt that wasn’t ours in the first place, instant saving of 9 billion a year.
Our banks were paid. That is now sovereign debt unfortunately. Lumped in with all our other sovereign debt.
You can ogra and f off with suggestions like that
Taxing drinking after midnight would be forever known as The Cinderella Tax. One of the more stupid ideas from FF.
If that’s the best Ogra FF have to offer, their parliamentary dinosaurs have little to fear from the FF young Turks, or should I say, cubs
A higher tax on alcohol will only serve to increase binge drinking- people will have an incentive to fill up on drink prior to midnight. To suggest anything else is not only stupid but goes against more or less every study carried out on licensing hours.
Well said. It would be a race against the clock – making sure you’re too pissed to want another drink after midnight. Just when you thought you’ve heard enough stupidity for one evening, FF come to the rescue.
If they put that levy on bottles & jam jars, I’ll be standing outside our local recycling place, 5 million to set up!! Ah well like father like son, as the saying goes….
Mee too. I remember being able to bring the empties down to the local shop. I earned my sweet money that way. Except for jam jars! My mother kept them to make jam!
Only problem then is that you have to be able to take them back, or to the recycle centre. I remember before they said we could put glass in the green bin, boxes of glass piling up and having to organise a lift to the recycle centre because all the local bottle banks disappeared.
It seems the ” young ff & fg ” are in line to wast tax payers money yet again, 5 million to set up people brining back bottles is ridiculous.
A gigantic tax on The Communication Clinic,inclusive of it’s husband and wife (PRONE to subterfuge) & their radio presenting son. Once spun for FF when Carr comm,now spinning for FG.
http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/how-the-leading-pr-firm-came-asunder-26428144.html
We could bulldoze aras an uachtarain and build social housing and affordable housing for thousands. The president can afford to pay for his own place with his salary.
So comments on the terry prone/tuam story have now been locked-no further comments allowed. I wonder how this could be. Interesting who the CC’s director has advised?
“advised clients ranging from Cabinet Ministers, the CEO’s and Chairmen of some of Ireland’s largest PLC’s through to members of the Catholic Heirarchy and CEO’s of global charities.”Communications clinic
@ James ya w..k.r…u must be the son of a lazy low life politician.
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