With all the personal information floating around in cyberspace these days it’s little wonder that identity theft and internet based fraud is on the up. It seems though that a bit of plain old burglary has done it for the barristers on this one however. No sophisticated hacking here just a bit of breaking and entering and the contact details and personal information for all practising barristers has been stolen from the Bar Council.
The incident happended on Friday evening and has resulted in the theft of a laptop and four hard drives containing addresses and contact details of barristers, the account numbers of 3,000 direct debit payers and witness details from around 1,500 complaints against barristers.

While bank account numbers and sort codes of 3,000 members were taken, it is understood that the data did not include any passwords, debit or credit card numbers or pin numbers.

According to the Bar Council the information stolen, which was held on a laptop and four computer hard drives, was well protected and is not readily accessible. Lucky chaps.