Details of 1.7m people on lost hard drive

A MISSING computer hard drive may contain personal information relating to about 1.7 million people, Bob Ainsworth, the defence minister, said yesterday.

In a written statement to Parliament, Mr Ainsworth said the portable hard drive was probably unencrypted.

Much of the data lost related to military recruits and included details of next of kin, passport and National Insurance numbers and bank accounts, he said.

Last week, it emerged that a Ministry of Defence contractor, EDS UK, had lost the hard drive from its secure facility in Hook, a town 45 miles west of London.

It followed the theft last month of an MoD disk holding sensitive data and, earlier this year, of a laptop with details of 600,000 new and prospective recruits.