Over 6,000 people’s personal data has been published online by Bungling officials following a ‘serious’ data breach. The Department for the Work and Pensions (DWP) has apologised after it was discovered that an extensive list of National Insurance numbers was left exposed online for over two years.
The data that has been left exposed is thought to belong to welfare claimants applying for PIP disability benefits. A watchdog has been examining the incident, with two of their lawyers claiming that this was a “serious” breach of data protection laws. The DWP officials listed the payments of thousands of individual assessments, alongside what are though to be Nation Insurance numbers. The spreadsheet which contained over 6,000 of the speculated National Insurance numbers was only removed on Monday after it is thought to have been exposed online for over 2 years already. A second spreadsheet was set to be removed yesterday.
