Headline news in Norway today concerns the country's first major public sector data breach. Apparently eight major newspapers were sent tax information by the Tax Authority (this information is, I'm told, intended to be in the public domain) - but accidentally included was a full list of Norwegian taxpayers' National Identity Numbers (personnumrene). The Norwegian NI Number happens to incorporate the citizen's gender and date of birth.
According to the story on the Dagbladet website, the leaked data would be quite enough, say, to order a mobile phone over the internet using someone else's identity.
I'm told that the Tax Authority's spokesman said: "This was a new service, and something went wrong. We have never had an
incident like this."
Posted by racingsnake
@ 04:30 PM GMT+00:00
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