Carphone Warehouse dumps personal data in street

THE supplier of mobile phones to the Queen has been dumping punters' personal data in a very public recycling bin because it is too expensive to keep.

Royal appointees, Carphone Warehouse, or as it is known in Europe, the Phonehouse, has all the paper copies of its direct billing authorisations, certificates of residency and contracts packed off to an office in Lisbon, Portugal. These are scanned and checked to see if the contracts are valid.

However once the process is finished, the accessory documents, which contain an ID thief's dream of information are shoved into the recycling bin on the street and left for the rubbish people to collect.

According to sources within the company, the material used to be stored. However last Thursday it was decided to abandon this policy because it cost too much.

The Lisbon office, known as the "Departamento de Reconciliação" in Portuguese, is semi-independent and operates under a service level agreement with Carphone Warehouse UK and other offices across the EU.

Apparently managers consulted this agreement and decided that it made no mention of keeping unnecessary documents and decided to stick the lot in the rubbish bin.

Eye witnesses say that the no effort is made to make the documents unreadable and they are placed in the recycle rubbish.

These bins are left outside on the street until the rubbish people collect them, making them a tempting target for ID thieves, or snuffling reporters.

Already thousands of people's documents are understood to have been trashed in this manner.

The INQ has asked the Carphone Warehouse UK for a comment and they told us that they were waiting for a response from their Lisbon office. We will update this story when they do. µ