Confidentiality of PDF benefit forms

[Becca7]

Question. I've discovered the  person who has helped me with my ESA50 has sent a copy of it to my email address. It is a yahoo email address. I'm really really worried now about confidentiality of the information. The only bit that had been done unfortunately was the part with all my personal information on it address NI etc.

I've had my identity stolen before and am now really really worried it could happen again because of this. It appears to have been twice, once to their email and once to mine. The only way to print the form is to send it to their email address as they don't see people with printers.

I'm really really paranoid about confidentiality. I had a cpn send an email about my care 4 years ago to my advocate who had an email address which ended up online and had my identity stolen via an employment website that cloned confidential details.

Can anyone reassure me about this? Or advise any steps I can take?

[Sunshine Meadows]

It is true that email address do get randomly hacked but as a method of identity theft or to make money by other means it is a very inefficient method.

People are a lot more aware of the need to have safe passwords than they were four years ago and a lot of us have security software on our machines.

If you are still worried email the person helping you and ask them to delete the email that included the PDF from their email sent box and delete the email you got after you save the PDF to your computer.

[Sunshine Meadows]

Ps

Also the likely benefits of getting the PDF by email eg being able to renew you ESA claim do outweigh the risk of identity theft.

If you can try to shift to being task orientated, get your ESA50 completed and sent in.

I know my posts to you of late could be coming across as too practical and lacking in emotional support but from experience I do know that the time from getting the form until the point it goes in the post is very stressful and does spark off a lot of upsetting 'What If' worries which cause emotional distress.

Once the form is in life and daily routines do come back to normal even though there is a wait for the outcome.
 >bighugs<

[Becca7]

It won't be completed.

We have an hour appointment and 15 pages to complete, printing, plus photocopying of the form. Unfortunately the intention to send the old form photocopied isn't possible as the people referenced heavily in it are no longer involved in my care

Thanks for the reply.

[ATurtle]

It is true that email address do get randomly hacked but as a method of identity theft or to make money by other means it is a very inefficient method.

People are a lot more aware of the need to have safe passwords than they were four years ago and a lot of us have security software on our machines.

The Website http://computing.help.inf.ed.ac.uk/choosing-a-strong-password has a good list of suggestions of what to avoid and why you want to choose a fairly random password.  However I would warn Ouchers that going away from the page linked here may not be approved by the University of Edinburgh. 

You can get free Open Source or even Closed Source programs that you can have on your PC to remember all your passwords.  I know most browsers have a password remember system but these are open to attack as they keep the passwords in a ".pwl" file that a hacker might gain access to.
,

[Becca7]

Thankyou for the information Aturtle. I don't even store my passwords anywhere. My worry was more information being actually transmitted non securely as I've had my identity stolen via that method before.