Let’s just say, for arguments sake, that you found yourself in possession of 2 compact discs containing the names, addresses and bank details of roughly twenty five million people.
I would suggest that there are two possible ways in which people would react to this set of circumstances.
- By doing the right thing by those 25 million people, and destroying the data and/or returning it to the fuckwits that lost it, or
- By thinking ‘I could make a few quid out of this’.
Obviously, if they’re found by someone inclined to action 1, then that’s all good. If they’re found by the other choice, don’t worry. Because some bright spark has that covered too.
A reward of £20,000 is being offered for the return of two HM Revenue and Customs CDs containing the personal details of 25 million people.
Because, obviously, if someone was motivated by money, there’s no way they could make more than 20K with that sort of information. And there’s definitely no way that they could simply copy the discs, return one set for the reward and sell the rest on to other, less publicly minded sorts…
In other words: people who would return the disks would do so anyway. People who would be swayed by the money might well be tempted by the larger sums they could get with that sort of data, instead of an average year’s salary and a pat on the back…
Just sayin’…