Stolen UK Govt. Computer Sold On eBay
February 29, 2008 | by Christopher Nickson
A stolen Home Office laptop, with a CD of data, is taken in for repair then handed over to police.
ZDNet has reported that a laptop stolen from the British Home Office has surfaced, with a CD of data under the keyboard. It was discovered when a customer took it into a Manchester repair centre because the machine wasn’t working. The computer had evidently been purchased on eBay.
Jonathan Parry, sales manager at Leapfrog Computers, told the site,
"Underneath the keyboard in the laptop was a CD labelled 'Home Office: Private and Confidential'. We tested it and it was fully encrypted, and so was the laptop. We contacted [the police] and they seized the equipment."
The computer had a sealed optical drive, meaning that someone had removed the laptop keyboard and placed the CD there.
According to the Home Office, both it and Greater Manchester Police were investigating the laptop. Over 500 government computers have vanished in the last seven years, many of them without any data encryption.
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