Amazing what you can get on Ebay these days.

[Grumpmeister]

Buy a laptop and get a free confidential Home Office CD. You'd think that with the amount they are charging us in taxes they could afford a couple of copoes of IT Security for Dummies. 

A highly confidential Home Office disk was found hidden in a laptop computer sold on eBay.
The CD was found between the keyboard and circuit board of the laptop by computer repair technicians in Westhoughton, near Bolton.

Technicians at the shop called police who sent around anti-terrorist officers to confiscate the machine, which had been bought in good faith.

The Home Office said investigations were under way into the incident.

The laptop had been taken into the Leapfrog Computers store by a customer who bought it on the internet auction site.

When engineers took off the keyboard they found a CD marked "Home Office - highly confidential".

Managing director Lee Bevan said: "I thought it was a spoof at first - I just figured someone was having a joke."

 
Mr Bevan said he thought it was joke to start with

Mr Bevan put the disk into the drive to check it and found it was encrypted.

"It also said, 'If found please return'. I thought, 'That's a funny thing to have on there,' but there you go."

Officers from Greater Manchester Police took the laptop and disk away but have now concluded their investigation.

A Home Office spokesman said: "Both the laptop and the disk were encrypted, thus safeguarding any information that might be stored on them.

"Investigations are now under way. It would be inappropriate to comment further while they are ongoing."

The incident follows a number of embarrassing losses of information by government departments in recent months.

HM Revenue and Customs mislaid 25 million child benefit claimants' details in the post, thousands of learner drivers had personal data lost by a DVLA contractor and Navy laptop with details of Armed Forces applicants also went missing.

[Uncle Mort]

When engineers took off the keyboard they found a CD marked "Home Office - highly confidential".

I don't understand how or why a disc should be under the keyboard?

[Snoopy]

When engineers took off the keyboard they found a CD marked "Home Office - highly confidential".

I don't understand how or why a disc should be under the keyboard?

Unless someone had hidden it there.

[Grumpmeister]

Could explain why he took the laptop to be repaired. Metal surface on the bottom of the CD in contact with the laptop motherboard......



Obviously whoever put it there in the first place wasnt an IT expert. Expect to see him recruited for their ID card infrastructure. 

[Snoopy]

Looking at my Laptop it is possible to ram a disc under the keyboard by simply not placing it correctly on the drive and then shoving the drive in.
Why anyone would want to do that I don't know but it certainly can be done with ease (I just did it ~ but not all the way in and then pulled it out again ..... as the Bishop said to the Choirboy)