Grange Hill TV firm's website exposes CV details

Flippin' 'eck Tucker!!!

By Kelly Fiveash • Get more from this author

Posted in IT Director, 16th April 2007 12:14 GMT

See what The Register's experts have to say on application security

Lime Pictures, the television production company behind teen dramas Hollyoaks and Grange Hill is currently displaying a prospective employee's personal details on its website.

A Reg reader spotted the error last Friday while browsing the job section of the Lime Pictures website after he clicked on a link that should have opened a blank online application form.

Instead, highly confidential information about a woman who had applied for the role of administration supervisor popped up on the screen (see here).

He immediately contacted Lime Pictures to alert them to the fact that "some poor soul's personal details" were fully viewable.

But the confidential details are still on display today.

On its job application forms, Lime Pictures states that "all information provided is stored on our internal database and will not be provided to any other organisation. The information provided will be used for recruitment and statistical purposes only and will be destroyed when no longer required".

In fact, data seems to be about as protected as the love-life of one of those identikit blonde Hollyoaks characters, as you can access the entire filled-in application of a Liverpool-based woman who has six GCSEs including a B in RE.

El Reg contacted the applicant to see how she felt about Lime Pictures' data protection cock-up.

She told us that she applied for the job around the middle of last week and that she was very concerned to discover this had happened. "With what happens now-a-days with identity fraud, it's really bad isn't it?" she said.

We also put a call into Lime Pictures' press spokeswoman Gemma Hayden to find out why the information hadn't been promptly removed, despite the fact the TV firm had been told about the problem last week.

But all we got was a cheery recorded message which said: "I'm now out on a shoot but will be back in the office on Friday."

We've left a message on Hayden's mobile too, but she is yet to return our call. ®

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