Junior doctor job website suspended

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The Department of Health said it was investigating allegations that doctors were able to reach each others messages on the site, a day after it emerged that highly confidential information about applicants was available for anyone to read.

A DoH spokeswoman said: "We have temporarily taken the MTAS website off-line and are investigating allegations that registered junior doctors could deliberately access each others messages."

Channel 4 News reported that a further breach uncovered on Thursday had allowed doctors using the site to read confidential details of any other applicant.

It was thought that applicants had been able to see each other's files by changing two digits in the personalised web address given to each individual.

Earlier, the Tories published the letter which they say confirms the Government knew almost eight weeks ago about security lapses in the website.

The letter from the British Orthopaedic Trainees Association (BOTA) to Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt is dated March 5 and highlights concerns about glitches which allowed details of applications to be read.

The Department of Health had already launched an investigation before the suspension of the site after highly personal content was revealed on Wednesday.

Peter Sommer, from the London School of Economics, told Channel 4 News: "This is a system that was obviously failing as a project. They had to produce a very quick and dirty result in order to serve their customers. They didn't even do that properly in terms of the most elementary form of password protection.

"This has to be one of the worst types of public sector security failure that I can think of."