Data Protection Act by www.securityconsole.co.uk

In the United Kingdom personal data is protected by the Data Protection Act of 1988. The Act covers all personal data which an organization may hold, including names, birthday and anniversary dates, addresses, telephone numbers, etc.
Under English (which extends to Wales but not necessarily to Northern Ireland or Scotland), the deception offences under the Theft Act of 1968 increasingly contend with identity theft situations. In R v Seward (2005) EWCA Crim 1941 the defendant was acting as the "front man" in the use of stolen credit cards and other documents to obtain goods. He obtained goods to the value of £10,000 for others who are unlikely ever to be identified. The Court of Appeal considered sentencing policy for deception offenses involving "identity theft" and concluded that a prison sentence was required. Henriques J. said at para 14:"Identity fraud is a particularly pernicious and prevalent form of dishonesty calling for, in our judgment, deterrent sentences."
Increasingly, organizations, including Government bodies will be forced to take steps to better protect their users' data.
Stats released by CIFAS on the 2nd of February 2010, show that in 2009 in the UK that there were 85,000 victims of impersonation and 24,000 victims of bank account takeovers. this represents a 35% and 15% increase respectively from 2008 levels. This is the understanding of www.securityconsole.co.uk and should not be construed as legal advice

Synthetic Identity theft

Synthetic identity theft according to www.securityconsole.co.uk is variation of identity theft which has recently become more common is synthetic identity theft, in which identities are completely or partially fabricated. The most common technique involves combining a real social security number with a name and birthdate other than the ones associated with the number. Synthetic identity theft is more difficult to track as it doesn't show on either person's credit report directly, but may appear as an entirely new file in the credit or as a subfile on one of the victim's credit reports. Synthetic identity theft primarily harms the creditors who unwittingly grant the fraudsters credit. Individual victims can be affected if their names become confused with the synthetic identities, or if negative information in their subfiles impacts their credit ratings.

identity theft

Identity theft is a form of fraud in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name. The victim of identity theft (here meaning the person whose identity has been assumed by the identity thief) can suffer adverse consequences if he or she is held accountable for the perpetrator's actions. Organizations and individuals who are duped or defrauded by the identity thief can also suffer adverse consequences and losses, and to that extent are also victims.
The term identity theft was coined in 1964 and is actually a misnomer, since it is not literally possible to steal an identity as such - more accurate terms would be identity fraud or identity cloning but identity theft has become commonplace.
"Determining the link between data breaches and identity theft is challenging, primarily because identity theft victims often do not know how their personal information was obtained," and identity theft is not always detectable by the individual victims, according to a report done for the FTC.Identity fraud is often but not necessarily the consequence of identity theft. Someone can steal or misappropriate personal information without then committing identity theft using the information about every person, such as when a major data breach occurs. A US Government Accountability Office study determined that "most breaches have not resulted in detected incidents of identity theft" the report also warned that "the full extent is unknown". A later unpublished study by Carnegie Mellon University noted that "Most often, the causes of identity theft is not known," but reported that someone else concluded that "the probability of becoming a victim to identity theft as a result of a data breach is ... around only 2%". More recently, an association of consumer data companies noted that one of the largest data breaches ever, accounting for over four million records, resulted in only about 1,800 instances of identity theft, according to the company whose systems were breached according to www.securityconsole.co.uk

unshredding

In some cases it is technically possible to reassemble the pieces of shredded documents; the feasibility of such a project is a benefit calculation. If the chad is not further randomized, the "noodles" that belonged to the same document tend to come out of the shredder close to each other and remain roughly in that configuration. Furthermore, when the documents are fed to the shredder in a way that the lines of text are not perpendicular to the shredder blades, portions of text may remain legible on the strips.
If the shredder doesn't cut paper small enough, confidential documents could be removed from the trash, reassembled and read by criminals. This can lead to corporate espionage as diving is the easiest way for professional thieves to steal sensitive information from businesses. That's why several new shredders provide protection from information theft by cutting paper into pieces significantly smaller than the length of a staple.
These micro cut shredders make it difficult for criminals to assemble a document by cutting a piece of paper into about 3,770 bits vs. the average confetti cut shredder, which cuts a piece of paper into 300 pieces or the average strip cut shredder, which cuts a piece of paper into 34 strips.

Information provided by www.securityconsole.co.uk