Grange Hill firm's website exposed thousands of CVs

Lime Pictures had been mistakenly displaying thousands of individual applicants' personal details on the job section of its website.

We reported yesterday on what initially appeared to be an isolated incident affecting just one applicant.

The Grange Hill and Hollyoaks TV production company had been contacted by a concerned Reg reader last Friday.

However, several readers got in touch with us yesterday to tell us that the problem was far more widespread than first reported.

In fact, up until around mid-afternoon yesterday, the entire database containing the history of nearly 20,000 job applications was open for all to see.

By simply changing the ID number on the query string of the URL, many more personal details of individual applicants were revealed.

It is not known how long the website had been displaying the confidential information which included home addresses, telephone numbers, and salary details. Shortly after The Reg spoke to the TV firm, however, the job section of the site was taken down.

Lime Pictures spokesperson Vicky Owen said the firm's technical team had "assured" her it had been taken down last Friday, immediately after the error was spotted.

She claimed that the job site had been out of action ever since.

"As far as our technical team is concerned as soon as we were alerted to the problem we rectified the situation and until the technology is sorted out no one can make applications via the internet," she said.

Owen insisted that The Reg, and its readers, had got their facts wrong and denied that the personal details were still viewable yesterday.

She added that Lime Pictures takes identity fraud and data protection "very, very, very seriously".

We have passed details of the error on to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the independent body which enforces and oversees the 1998 Data Protection Act. ®