BBC apologises over theft of children’s data

Rob Stringer

The BBC has apologised after a memory stick containing the personal data of over 250 children was stolen from Objective, an independent production company.

The data listed names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and dates of birth of children, and details of when they and their parents would be on holiday.

On discovery of the theft, BBC children’s controller, Richard Deverall, wrote to the children’s parents informing them of the theft, writing that he ‘offered his sincere apologies’ and assuring them that the BBC were ‘taking all possible action to mitigate the consequences of this regrettable accident.’

"There's absolutely no evidence this data has been misused and the measures we took were entirely precautionary," said a BBC spokesman. "Whilst the independent company was responsible for this issue, we took it seriously.”

“I think what people realising is that data is valuable,” said Toby Weiss, president and chief executive officer of Application Security, Inc. “Different organisations are targeted now. Before, people would rob banks because that’s where the money was. Now it’s data, because people can monetise that.”

“You can see how a production company would have valuable data,” he explained.

“The BBC might have news stories that could be taken before being broadcast. criminals might be able to monetise it.”

According to Weiss, “There are too many organisations with too much data floating around.” His concern is that “people react in the wrong way and try to protect the conduits of data: laptops, iPhones etc, but everything is connected. The fastest thing is to understand where the data actually is."

The children had applied to appear in Gastronauts, a new BBC1 series.

Other production credits of the production company Objective include Peep Show, Star Stories, Derren Brown's TV shows and Tonightly.