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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to raise another point. When I read the amendment, I was thinking about how the notifications will be issued. One problem that has become apparent recently—first with the loss of the HMRC disks and then when banks find that your credit card is being defrauded and they ring up to say, "Can you identify yourself? Give me your date of birth", and so on—is the opportunity for phishing. Often, criminals use the fact that they know that subscribers are going to receive such notifications to purport to be the people sending them out and then to ask for various details that they can use for nefarious purposes. The code should also include a requirement on those sending out the letters to put in place some form of security system whereby a subscriber can check that it is a genuine notification, not one just purporting to be so. That is a whole area about which all these industries have been very lax so far, because there is no huge pressure on them to do anything about it. This might be a good opportunity to get them to pay more attention to it.