Dutch care insurance company, CZ, recently made the headlines as a result of a faulty online quote system. Personal information of about 55000 people with regard to past applications could be retrieved by other parties. Such information included the
date of birth, bank numbers, social fiscal numbers, gender, name, address, post code, phone number and email address of these people. The online quote system has been removed from CZ's website.

The blunder was first discovered by two programmers who used the system for a quote and found the leak. CZ was informed of this but five days later, the information was still accessible and this led to contact with the newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad.

Whilst there is no proof of abuse of such personal information - or no proof yet, the fact that such a leak is happening should be sending warning bells to us. How many more websites visited are carelessly giving access to the same? How many more companies are just as negligent? This is just the privacy breach of one Dutch company - its negligence in implementing proper security measures to protect these personal information.

Also, if you look at CZ's website, you will come to discover that the vital online privacy policy which should be available to inform visitors of CZ's privacy practice and security is lacking.

What you should always look for when surfing on a website is its privacy policy and if you are not satisfied, do grill the organisation on it without divulging too much personal information. Use a pseudonym, or create a separate email account without using your name. Do read our previous entry Who is abusing my email? for more information on this.

Well, just to let you know that personal information is carelessly handled everyday.