LONDON — A laptop containing the personal details of 600,000 new and prospective military recruits has been stolen, the Ministry of Defense said Friday, the latest in a series of government blunders over data.
The laptop was stolen from a Royal Navy officer in the central city of Birmingham last week, a statement said.
The amount of information held on each individual varied from just a name to full background details including passport numbers, insurance numbers and family background information.
The ministry said it was urgently writing to around 3,500 people whose bank details were included on the database.
“The stolen laptop contained personal information relating to some 600,000 people who have either expressed an interest in, or have joined, the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force,” the defense department said.
In December, Britain’s top transport official said that a disk drive containing personal information on 3 million driving test candidates had been lost in the United States.
And last fall, two computer disks from a tax and welfare department containing names, addresses, national insurance numbers and, in some cases, banking details, for 25 million adults and children disappeared while being sent by internal mail, ministers said.
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