MTAS - would someone tell me this is not true

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Dr Crippen needs some help. Some reassurance. I need to know that a message I have just received is a leg pull.

The message is an email from (another) distressed young hospital doctor. He has asked to remain anonymous. I have advised him to stay exactly where he is. The police are on their way. Comrade doctors do not deserve or need anonymity, so it is off to the Gulag...sorry VSO...for him.

His email says this:

I wish to bring to your notice how MTAS continues to be a ridiculous way of medical recruitment.

Any applicant can see ANY correspondence sent by another candidate or from MTAS to another candidate by just going to his inbox and changing the message number displayed in the url.

Please check for yourself.

In good will,




A beaten, pulverised NHS junior doctor

Dr Crippen cannot check this himself as he is not registered with MTAS and so cannot get into the system. Do not laugh. I may be the only person in the country who cannot get into the system...but I cannot. I have tried.

Surely this cannot be true.

Would someone kindly check it out for me?

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I have, as I say, not been able to check this out, but I have now has several emails, as well as the ones in the comments, to confirm that it is true. I have also had an email saying:

Take care!

You are inciting people to commit a criminal offence by hacking the MTAS web site in order to verify this claim, and your whistleblower is already guilty by his own admission.

I genuinely feel for the jnr docs., but a criminal record is not worth it – that will really destroy their careers.

I suppose this may be technically true, but I cannot think of any other way to confirm the presence of this new and appalling loophole. This does not need to be an attempt, with malice aforethought, to "hack". Accidentally transpose two digits and it will happen accidentally.

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It gets worse. No, really, it does. You would not think it possible, but it does.

You do not even need to log onto the MTAS site. Dr Crippen has just been sent a URL address, which ends in four numbers. Put any random four numbers in at the end and you are taken straight to a MTAS reply to a junior doctor offering him/her a job. The recipient is not named, but it is probable he/she could be traced by replying to the hospital who offered the job.

Dear Oh! Dear.

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Dr Crippen has spoken to a civil servant at the DoH this afternoon and advised him of the loophole so that it may be closed.

In the mean time, I am sure that this, from the DoH MMC site, may help:

What about the security of my personal information?

The Department of Health and their partners take the security of your personal information very seriously. We have taken a number of measures to ensure that the information you provide to us to help you to gain your next position within the NHS is carefully managed and securely processed. This situation is constantly monitored and reviewed to ensure that potential risks are minimised.

For further information on how your personal data is used please see Terms and Conditions.

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