The information commissioner is investigating how confidential information stored on a Swindon Council computer hard drive has been bought on eBay. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) confirmed it was currently reviewing how a University of Glamorgan professor bought the information on the web auction site. The discovered data includes secret council employee salary information, private e-mail correspondence, personal information about corporate and residential planning applications, and confidential council computer system details. Professor Andrew Blyth, from the university, said: ‘The processing of very personal information needs to be stored in a safe way. ‘It is clear that the disposal services are not working for this to come out.' The council said it would be contacting the university in order to investigate how the information escaped. A spokesman said: ‘For the information on this particular disk to have survived suggests that it's on an older computer. ‘That said, we want to investigate how this information has escaped and we will contact the university to obtain more details.'
