Daily Mail loses hacks' personal details

The Guardian has reported that the organisation behind the Daily Mail, Associated Newspapers, has lost the details of thousands of staff.

Associated Newspapers sent a letter to staff and hacks letting them know that a laptop, stolen last week, contained their names, addresses, bank account numbers and sort codes.

The Guardian took the angle that the Daily Mail had likely been embarrassed, as the Mail had lambasted the government over its repeated data loss incidents.

"After months of criticising "criminally careless" government departments for losing confidential records, the company has been forced to send out an embarrassing letter telling journalists they may now be at risk of identity theft," said the Guardian piece.

You can see the Guardian's point. When the Daily Mail described the loss of a Ministry of Defence laptop in January, it called the situation a "huge embarrassment to the MoD" and the "latest in a string of data blunders", while its headline for the HMRC data breach screamed "Mind Blowing Incompetence."

It will be interesting to see the angle the Daily Mail takes over future government and private sector data loss incidents.