How to embarrass the Govt (even more)

[Blue]

Someone has just made a suggestion over lunch, for embarrassing the Inland Revenue even more.

Recruit thousands of people to each take a blank CD, label it clearly "Inland Revenue, Child Benefit Info" and leave them lying around in public places...

I take it that neither you nor any of your friends fear that your details are on the lost discs !

 

[Kirstie]

Yes I am absolutely concerned about that.

 

[marinyork]

The really worrying thing will be if they manage to get credit cards for the medieval sheep.

Not quite medieval but before the Bank of England was set up there were all kinds of strange banks, wasn't there a Bank of the Black Sheep. I'm thinking this is obviously where there money was made.

 

[Cycling Naturalist]

I take it that neither you nor any of your friends fear that your details are on the lost discs !

Au contraire, Arch and her friends believe that as they've got nothing to hide, they've got nothing to fear . How many children are YOU claiming for? Does Mrs. Blue know?

 

[SamNichols]

A word of caution. I wonder whether leaving fake CDs lying around might be classed as a felony - under the 'wasting police time' category. Not as serious as the 'Wearside Jack' case, maybe, but...

...or is this the modern equivalent of "I'm Spartacus"?

How on Earth would they trace it was you? Print a label for it, rather than handwriting it, wipe it clean of prints if you're feeling particularly paranoid.

 

[Blue]

Au contraire, Arch and her friends believe that as they've got nothing to hide, they've got nothing to fear . How many children are YOU claiming for? Does Mrs. Blue know?

 

[Pete]

cds on ebay

Ebay have taken down the listing. So what was it then?

How on Earth would they trace it was you? Print a label for it, rather than handwriting it, wipe it clean of prints if you're feeling particularly paranoid.

Dunno, everything's possible these days, expect the worst. CCTV, DNA testing, shop records, the works... Took them 25 years to nail the 'Ripper' hoaxer didn't it - but they got him in the end...

 

[sheddy]

Twas a spoof ebay listing with 2 Cds. Search for 'child benefit' to see others

 

[Arch]

I take it that neither you nor any of your friends fear that your details are on the lost discs !

Mine won't be, but my sister's might, and several of my friends. I fail to see how having a go at the ineptitude of the department concerned makes that any worse for anyone involved. You did spot that I said blank discs? You don't think I have copies of the real ones, and was going to copy them and leave them lying around?

 

[buggi]

i'd like to know how they managed to get so many people's details on only two cd's????

 

[mickle]

i'd like to know how they managed to get so many people's details on only two cd's????

Very very small handwriting I expect!

 

[bof]

i'd like to know how they managed to get so many people's details on only two cd's????

300 odd bytes a person is enough to hold all someones child benefit details. The database is likely to date back to the days when computer memory and storage was expensive so it wasnt wasted.

 

[domtyler]

i'd like to know how they managed to get so many people's details on only two cd's????

Didn't they used to say that you could fit the entire contents of the British Library on a CD? I think you may be underestimating just how much data 700 megabytes is, easy to do in this age of multi media, but plain text is a different story altogether.

 

[domtyler]

Here is an example for you Buggi:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20417/20417.txt

The entire text of "The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4)", by J. Arthur Thomson weighs in at 659 kilobytes, this is a weighty tome in printed hard copy by anyone's standards. But you could fit almost one and a half thousand books of this size onto a single CD.