Since April this year the entire infosecurity industry in the UK and beyond has been waiting with baited breath for the dreaded £500,000 fine to be levied.

It is now August and yet with several high profile breaches, including that of Barnet Council and the Kent Police, made public, a financial penalty has yet to be issued by the ICO.

When Google revealed its Street View cars inadvertently collected data from unsecure Wi-Fi networks, the authorities in Germany, Australia and America were quick to take action.

And while it is not fair to lay all the blame at Google’s door – why were so many Wi-Fi networks left unsecure?? – we can’t ignore the fact that personally identifiable information was harvested by Street View without our knowledge.

The ICO visited Google HQ and examined a sample of the ‘payload’ only to find the information did not include “meaningful” details which could be linked to an individual.

They said in a statement: “As we have only seen samples of the records collected in the UK we recognise that other data protection authorities conducting a detailed analysis of all the payload data collected in their jurisdictions may nevertheless find samples of information which can be linked to identifiable individuals.

“However, on the basis of the samples we saw we are satisfied so far that it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data”.

So while Google gets sued in the US, Street View cars are back on the beat in the UK, albeit this time without the offending antennas.

At least we can watch horse boy in Aberdeen, shark attacks in Oxford and Paddington Bear strolling down Trafalgar Square, while we wait for the ICO to bear its teeth.

Probably not.

Well what if I told you some of these data leaks cost you money.

Now I’ve got your attention.

It seems our very own Government is the biggest culprit of data storage equipment loss but it’s the average Joe tax payer that foots the bill.

According to figures, released by Lewis PR following a Freedom of Information request, between June 2008 and the end of May this year 340 laptops have been lost or stolen from Ministry of Defence staff, costing us a whopping £620,000.

A further 593 CDs, DVDs and floppy disks, 215 USB memory sticks, 96 hard-disk drives and 13 mobile phones also went missing.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, some of the stolen items weren’t encrypted so could be accessed by criminals.

Of 1,257 hi-tech items that disappeared from the MoD, a staggering 983 were not encrypted.

Yet only nine staff were disciplined over the losses.

The statistics also detailed a further 10 Governmental departments that incurred major data losses.  In fact more than 500 laptops were lost or stolen from 11 UK Whitehall departments during this period. 

These combined losses cost the tax payer approximately £777,854.29 in the last two years.

Only 17 staff members were disciplined over these incidents.

These are worrying statistics indeed particularly as many of the lost items were Blackberries, USB sticks and mobile phones.

In these days of heightened global security how can this amount of data be unencrypted? 

How can staff continue to be so lax with our private information?

If they’re that careless about their current equipment containing sensitive data, do they have a strictly audited security disposal policy for data destruction of these portable storage devices at their normal end-of-life?  Or do they just leave them lying around?

How long will the taxpayer be expected to pay for these mistakes?

I don’t know about the average Joe but I would rather have the money in my pocket…wouldn’t you?

The beauty of these models is you can do everything on the go – check emails, send texts, make calls, surf the net and even arrange your schedule.  It’s like carrying a mini laptop in your pocket.

But the problem with having so much information stored on your phone is that you have so much information stored on your phone.

Take a minute and think about how much personally identifiable information is on your phone.  Portable devices carry personal data relating to recent calls made, photos, emails, route from home to work, stored texts which are all potentially comprising data.

Now imagine your phone is lost or stolen.

Scary thought isn’t it.  Especially if you use the phone for business.

But it’s not just theft and loss that are dangerous.  Even the simply upgrading your phone can be hazardous.  Has your phone been completely wiped of all data?  That’s the risk you take when you hand in your old phone over for a shiny new replacement.

It is important, especially for those who store both personal and work related information on their smartphones, to ensure the data is secure.  It’s not enough to shred the storage devices from servers, laptops and PC’s, these handheld devices also need to be physically destroyed if they are no longer used.

It is vital that all categories of personally identifiable information are securely disposed of.

A new report from consultancy PwC this week found that a company’s employees are its best defence against security threats, and should be empowered and educated about technology risk including mobile phones.

So let’s all start by taking much more ‘personal accountability’ by looking after portable business data as carefully as you would your own personal filing cabinet.  You wouldn’t leave your last itemised phone bill, bank details, personal address book or photos lying around would you?

And beware of the honey trap.  Just ask Gordon Brown’s aide about securing his BlackBerry.

First it was Google.  The corporation with the most popular search engine in the world came under heavy fire after it was revealed its Street View cars inadvertently collected data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks.  Now Google is being sued across the globe and Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has dubbed the incident possibly “the largest privacy breach in the history across western democracies”.

Then came Facebook.  The social networking site has been repeatedly criticised for its privacy controls and last week CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally acknowledged that they had “missed the mark” with their privacy settings.  They have now released new “simplified” privacy settings to fix the problem.

But is it fair to lay all the blame at the doors of Google and Facebook?

In the Google case there is a lesson to be learned here.  Why are so many of us not securing our home and business Wi-Fi networks? 

Anyone can sit outside your house or business and use your internet service to download your private information including bank account details, passwords, date of birth…the list goes on.

Securing your Wi-Fi network is vital whether it is at home or at work.  If you are a business owner ensure your employees are aware of your data security protocols and the dangers of unsecured wireless networks.  Nobody wants a staff member sharing private corporate information while using free Wi-Fi at the corner Starbucks.

With Facebook, the privacy settings were getting too complicated and steps needed to be taken to ensure users were fully aware of what information was private and what was not.

However how much information is too much to share on these sites? 

Most people include their name, date of birth, place of residence, relationship status, children’s names while others share much more including phone numbers, email addresses and corporate information.

How many times has someone on your friends list lost their mobile phone and posted their new number or in fact asked you to post your number to reload onto the new phone.   They wouldn’t normally contemplate leaving their address book lying around, so why publicise this type of personally identifiable information?

A seasoned fraudster could potentially use this information to bypass security questions about you…think about it how many of us use our date of birth or child’s name as a password?  Not to mention the number of Facebook ‘Friends’ who we have never met or even know.

While I agree Facebook needed to review the privacy controls, we need to review how much information we reveal online.