How ‘safe’ is data sent to the wrong address?

Mrs C.G. writes: My husband and I have lived at our address for 39 years. Recently we received a letter from Western Union, addressed to Mr Rasheed. We have no knowledge of anyone of this name and have had no dealings with Western Union, so I called the firm. I was instructed to open the envelope and found a letter about a computer intrusion. We would like to know how our address came to be on Western Union’s database and want to be assured that our credit record has not been compromised. THE letter tells Mr Rasheed: ‘We have discovered that some of your information may have been accessed without authorisation as a result of a computer intrusion against an external vendor system formerly used by Western Union for secure data storage.’

It then assures Mr Rasheed that his payment card details have not been hacked, though hackers may have got his bank name, contact details and some information on his Western Union transactions.

Ironically, Western Union itself accidentally gave you the name of its customer while presumably Mr Rasheed is in the dark.

Western Union cannot explain why the letter went to your address, except to say it was possible Mr Rasheed gave your address as his own.

What it can say is it holds no personal information about you. It understands your concerns and will pay for a monitoring service to keep an eye on the privacy of your own data if you wish.