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UK Government Suffers Major Storage Snafu

The UK government has suffered a massive data breach after two disks containing personal details of 25 million people were lost by the country's equivalent of the IRS.

You read that right: 25 million. The disks, which contain welfare information on almost half of the U.K. population,
went missing last month when Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) sent the disks to the National Audit Office (NAO).

With a major police investigation already underway, details of the breach started to emerge today.

A junior HMRC official sent the password-protected disks, containing child benefit payment information on 7 million families, to the NAO via courier firm TNT, but failed to register or record the package.

The package never arrived at its destination.

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