Could the loss of data from the huge Internal Revenue Service master files cause a financial meltdown in this country? That's what some experts are pondering as the U.K. mops up the mess left in the wake of the disappearance of two password-protected CDs containing the country's entire database of child benefit recipients -- 25 million people. The breach, which happened when a third-party delivery company lost the discs, affected four out of 10 people in the U.K., the largest relative segment of a country's population involved in a privacy violation ever publicly disclosed.

At Computerworld.

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