Does anyone know to what I'm referring?

Yes, I saw an article about it on Wired UK's website.

Not seen it though.

I would really encourage you to head here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/erasing-david/4od#3067659 when you get some spare time to watch it. Not sure how long it lasts.

I watched it last night and was fascinated and appalled in equal measure. You don't have to be Bratty to be concerned.

I've got it on the PVR to watch. I think it's about 90 minutes in total.

Looking forward to it.

Ta for the reminder - I'm about half-way through watching it and am having a POETS day (well afternoon, anyway) so... I've just hit play

But yes - all a bit worrisome; anyone else trying to remember all the stuff they've bought from Amazon..?

Pete

Gutted I missed it. Knowing More4, it should be repeated.

I heard about this a while ago. It looked really interesting. Will try and catch it on 4OD

I watched it - thought it was sensationalist crap.

Ok. Aside from that, how did you feel about the subject matter?

Pretty underwhelmed.

::SPOILERS::

So they dug through their bins and discovered a load of personal information. They used that to pretend to be him and find some appointment details - that's the governments fault??

I don't think he concluded by blaming the government. In fact, I felt his conclusion was rather inconclusive compared to what I might have expected. He was more concerned about the amount of data we potentially give away without realising. But also raised questions about government and corporations and what they know about us.

There is a lot of silliness regarding data protection. You can't call a corporation on behalf of someone your helping because of the act, but you can very easily pretend to be them if you know some personal data, which is relatively easy to come by. That's alarming AND ridiculous. No? Are you not concerned by the amount of data available about you?

Yeah, I take your point - it would be relatively easy for someone to pretend to be me - as we saw in the show.

Does it bother me, perhaps not as much as it should do. *Shrug*

I personally don't worry about giving data to public organisations. I choose not to give it do private companies where possible, though and avoid putting personal data online as much as I can. Having said that, I'm sure someone could probably track me down if they wanted to - I've probably left my details on a domain registration somewhere.

:: MORE SPOILERS ::

I know he didn't conclude that it was the government who let him down, but I felt that it was certainly a theme of the show.

It started by going on about the government are watching us etc lots of footage of security cameras etc etc but the people who hired him relied on his own failings to find him, - not those of the government.

If they hadn't found all that stuff in his rubbish bins, would they have found him? If they hadn't found all that stuff online about him, would they have found him?

That's why I thought it was pretty sensationalist, and although an interesting program not a particularly shocking one.

I've made a few calls for my dad and pretended to be him, with his consent of course. It means I can help with his IT issues without us having to be in the same room at the same time. It would be good if more companies accepted this sort of delegation and would probably save them call centre time in India too.

I can understand why you arrived at that conclusion now. And I agree with what your saying. But for me, that doesn't diminish the rest of the points he made. Sure he was careless, but he was careless because (like so many people) he lived in ignorance of how the system works until the government lost his personal data and he got the apology letter. It can only be a good thing that people become aware of the system as David did.

If like you they understand what is going on and the flaws and don't care - nobody can do anything about that. However, it's my belief that a great many people don't know the extent to which we are under surveillance in this country, but also how it is peddled as helping us. When all it does is restrict us and open up a Pandora's box of potential problems (the worst of which are yet to come).



As for this, wouldn't it by nice if you didn't have to commit fraud to help people? But also, are the security questions used by most corporations not drastically weak??

You can probably find most of what you need on facebook. Don't even need to get dirty rooting around in trash.