I made a silly
mistake when posting a blog entry recently, and accordingly offer an unreserved
apology to all my chums at the Royal Bank of Scotland.
What happened?
Well, I was so
taken with the story that the ICO had fined the Bank of Scotland £75,000 for continually faxing various documents to two
wrong numbers that I blogged about it. Nothing wrong with the text. But there
was something wrong with the accompanying image – which was of the logo of the Royal
Bank of Scotland, rather than the Bank of Scotland. Oops. My lack of knowledge of the Scottish
banking scene shines through. I ought to have known that there was a Bank of
Scotland, as well as a Royal Bank of Scotland. But if I did, in the heat of the moment in
searching for an appropriate image, I forgot. A more appropriate image (the logo of the Bank
of Scotland) accompanies that blog posting, now.
My mistake came at
a useful time - if any time can be
considered “useful”, that is. I recently had lunch with a chum had experienced
the age-old problem of an inappropriate email having being sent to the wrong
address. No harm was done, and the incident was quickly contained. The recipient
destroyed their copy without forwarding it to anyone else. The sender was just
glad that no incriminating photos accompanied the informal “how nice it was to
meet you last night” note. My chum was extremely embarrassed about the incident – but we
agreed that it did serve as a reminder about how careful we need to be when
communicating anything, these days. It’s so easy to hit the “send” button
without checking absolutely everything. Even
now I cringe as I remember some of the typos that were not spotted and still
exist in documents I’m associated with that are now in the public domain.
Fortunately, most of these documents are evidently so boring that few people
have noticed the typos. Of if they have, they have (mostly) been too busy to tell
me.
I’m glad that,
in this case, my chums at RBS got in touch to tell me about my howler,
so that I could correct it. It would have been equally nice if someone at the Bank
of Scotland had pointed out that I had used someone-else’s logo in relation to “their” story – but never mind.
We all do the best we can. We all make mistakes, too – but hopefully we can
cheerfully correct those that are notified to us, and hope that no offence is
taken by our lack of diligence.
One of the first
times I can remember the names of institutions getting mixed up was during the
wonderful “Children’s Matinee at the Coliseum” scene in the 1979 movie Life of
Brian. Devotees of the film will remember the following exchange taking
place:
Brian: Are you the Judean People's
Front?
Reg: F*** off!
Brian: What?
Reg: Judean People's Front! We're The
People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front, God!
Rogers: Blighters...
Brian: Can I...join your group?
Reg: No, piss off!
Brian: I didn't want to sell this stuff,
it's only a job! I hate the Romans as much as anybody!
All in PFJ except Brian: Ssch! Ssch!
Ssch! Ssch! Ssch!
Brian: Oh.
Judith: Are you sure?
Brian: Oh, dead sure. I hate the Romans
already.
Reg: Listen! If you wanted to join the
PFJ, you'd have to have really hate the Romans.
Brian: I do!
Reg: Oh, yeah, how much?
Brian: A lot!
Reg: Right, you're in. Listen, the only
people we hate more than the Romans, are the f****** Judean People's Front.
All in PFJ except Brian: Yeah!
Judith: Splitters!
Rogers: And the Judean Popular People's
Front!
All in PFJ except Brian: Yeah!
Splitters!
Loretta: And the People's Front of
Judea!
All in PFJ except Brian: Yeah!
Splitters!
Reg: What?
Loretta: The People's Front of Judea.
Splitters!
Reg: We are the People's Front of
Judea!
Loretta: Oh. I thought we were the
Popular Front.
Reg: People's Front! God...
Rogers: Whatever happened to the
Popular Front, Reg?
Reg: He's over there.
All in PFJ except Brian: Splitter!
Sources:
http://dataprotector.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/another-unforgivable-data-breach.html
The movie script
for Monty Python’s Life of Brian can be found at http://sfy.ru/?script=mp_brian
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