Wanna Buy A Sort Code, Mate?

After the disappearing tax discs (see my previous post) identity theft is in the news again. It is one of those things, like avian flu or bio-terrorism, that never entirely goes away despite its lack of substance. Whenever nothing much is happening and we're starting to look too contented, journalists always get one out of the drawer and whack us over the head with it. The term is a dramatic one but doesn't really mean the theft of a whole identity. Sometimes passport forgery is involved. Mostly, though, it just means somebody getting access to your bank account. But maybe that's all our identity is supposed to be reduced to: our savings. In the same way that 'lifestyle programs' tell us not how to style our life but how to spend our money.

The Guardian, which is supposed to know better, has been getting in on the fun. An investigation yesterday found that not only are account details being stolen, they are offered up for barter on the internet. One can apparently sidle into certain websites and thence into chat rooms. There one meets dodgy characters operating from "frozen Siberia" who offer a whole range of sort codes for a fistful of Paypal credits. Why do all the cybercriminals seems to be from Russia, incidentally? Admittedly it's a rather impoverished and lawless country, but surely some American or British criminals are muscling into the action? I suspect that some are, but use fake Russian names to give them extra credibility. Just as no spam scam is taken seriously unless it's Nigerian.

Anyway, the comedy of the story comes from the apologetic last paragraph. The Guardian's journalist bought the details of one account. A week later, he was still waiting to receive said details. This probably happens a lot: one hundred per cent of the time seems a good guess. After all, if you're a criminal with genuine account details before you, would you just sell them on to receive a fraction of their value? Or if you did sell them, wouldn't you first empty them right up to their overdraft limit? And then have a good laugh at the buyer? A lot of chat rooms resemble bad nightclubs. The ones which The Guardian is shrieking about is a seedy East End pub holding a ferret-faced man with deep pockets. He claims the gold necklaces he's offering you are genuine. He hints they are stolen. But what he's really got is the meeting of fairground trinkets and a lot of yellow paint.

Crooks con other crooks. I'm glad that it still goes on. It's an ancient practice, understandably so. One danger, that of being reported to the police, is removed. The other used to be that of the conned tracking the conner down and beating him to a bloody pulp with baseball bats. But now the miracle of the internet protects the grifters from that as well. After all, they are all hidden in frozen Siberia.

25 Million To One

The latest big story in British politics involves records. Most of the recent ones have done, actually. We have an abeyance of glamour right now, with too few ambitions and not enough crooks. Even the change of Prime Ministers earlier this year was so protracted and predictable that hardly anyone noticed when it finally happened. Instead we're supposed to get excited about numbers. Someone in government is always counting heads wrong or not counting them at all. The opposition parties scream for punishment and the rest of us wonder why we're supposed to care. The new story is more enjoyable, however. Because of its clarity, because of some of the actors involved. And also because for once it doesn't involve immigrants, so the criticisms don't carry the tang of racism.

A month ago a tax officer put the records of every person affected by child benefit claims – all 25 million of them – on two CD's and posted them to the audit office in London. They never arrived. And that, with brilliant simplicity, is all that has happened; or failed to happen. The CD's may be in the hands of master criminals even now ransacking the bank accounts of the unlucky claimants. They may be buried in a sorting room staffed by morons. They may be in Roswell, or in the pockets of Elvis or Lord Lucan. I suspect we'll never find out. In a nation awash with little shiny discs, finding them will be like looking for a needle in an entire pastoral vale, never mind a haystack. Twenty five million to one sounds about right for the chances.

TNT were the couriers who lost the discs. Even apart from the punning possibilities, this gave me a laugh. TNT are one of those companies bursting with both arrogance and idiocy. We once used them to send a package to Ireland and it turned up in Italy. Given this, the police should think alliterative and look in Luton, Leamington or Latvia for a parcel supposed to be in London. The fact that it was dispatched from the town of Washington is also fortuitous. Grand statements like "Police are raiding the Washington offices" can be made. Even though they're only referring to some scrubby little place in darkest Tyneside.

Sadly, there are signs of the story running out of steam. The head of the Inland Revenue has already resigned. Gordon Brown has already apologised. Clearly annoyed at having his demands met before he could demand them, David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, was today reduced to insisting that Brown apologise again and again. Possibly once an hour on the hour, with the chiming of Big Ben. Action could be taken against TNT but that's probably too much to hope for. They handle all the Inland Revenue's post. If the tax office announce they're cancelling the contract there are suddenly going to be disgruntled TNT employees facing redundancy all over the country, each with sensitive documents in their vans.

What the episode has shown, once again, is how technology facilitates incompetence. Before computers, 25 million records would have filled a room. A lorry would be needed to move them, perhaps a whole convoy. Losing a giraffe would be easier. Now they can be burned onto two drinks mats and just slip away, lost amidst the second hand Coldplays and the Twenty Soul Classics Free With The Times.