Bank of Ireland: we don't understand identity theft

Last week, the bank said that medical records, bank account details, names, addresses and dates of birth of 10,000 customers were on the laptops.
In an update, Bank of Ireland said an assessment had concluded that the risk of fraud arising from the thefts was 'very low', as the data on the laptops did not include bank account passwords, PINs or copies of signatures. (link)

This is so pig-headedly wrong I can't come up with a suitable comment. You have someone's date of birth, bank account details, name, and address? You can get some pretty funky fraud going right there, with a little ingenuity and some social engineering to grease the wheels of the process.

indications that I may be a nerd

A few months back, I went to a doctor I hadn't been to before. In his surgery, I noticed that he had a Macintosh Cube, something I'd never actually seen in real life in the brief period they were available. And so I commented on it, and he remarked that he was actually thinking of replacing it with an iMac, but he was quite aware of the (admittedly nerdy) cachet of owning such a piece of hardware.
( what happened next... )