I had a near-sleepless night when it dawned on me one evening recently, after reading an article in a newspaper, that I had sent an ID document by email to an address that had been given to me over the phone – and the address didn’t conform to with the bank’s usual email address template. True, I had initiated the call to the bank, and it was by way of follow up to an application I had commenced – but still, perhaps I had been conned by a rogue operator?
Needless to say, as soon as the lines opened in the morning, I rang to check what was going on. Again, the person I got through to had access on his screen to all the information, and was able to talk knowledgeably about all aspects of the application. He reassured me that the email address that I’d been given was legitimate and that I was not in danger of having my ID compromised.
But lesson learnt, yet again – you can’t be too careful about emails and security issues. I’m 99% comfortable that all is well on this occasion (presumably it’s unlikely that two separate employees of a major bank are in a conspiracy to misappropriate people’s ID!), but I should never have sent an email with such important information. The danger, of course, is that it will go to a scam address (my concern here), but there’s also the risk that that the information is in digital form on the great big email server in the sky (if a scammer can be bothered trawling for it, especially if I do my best to delete it) and on the bank’s system (inevitable, I guess, because even if you don’t send it to them, they’ll record it). I admit that I regard the likelihood of an email being intercepted whilst in transit as being the least of my concerns. 
Musings and Mutterings 