LexisNexis, the international information repository behemoth, is sending out 40,000 letters this week to notify the individuals whose personal and financial information was accessed in a years-old data breach.
An additional 300 identities are known to have been stolen and used to open fraudulent credit card accounts. Because of the extensive data retained by LexisNexis, the other 40,000 consumers are, of course, also at risk of becoming identity theft victims as well. (more…)
We’d all like to think we can trust our employers to protect our personal and financial information, but if New Orleans public school employees every believed it, they’ve had a rude awakening.
The massive warehouse used to store employee records was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina, but apparently it contents have been ignored or forgotten since. Last week a local reporter found the gate to the warehouse yard standing open, the overhead door raised and any pretense of security absent. Within he found a mountain of personnel records. (more…)
Officials with the Oklahoma State Department of Human Services describe their second data breach of 2009 as an isolated incident. They say the thief was motivated by nothing more than the street value of the laptop computer. But, whether that’s true or not, the thief now holds the lives of 500,000 Oklahomans in his hands. (more…)
Dozens of Irving Independent School District (Texas) employees have become identity theft victims after a benefits report containing 3,400 employees’ names and Social Security numbers was casually discarded as trash. (more…)
University of Florida has achieved unwanted notoriety for their numerous data breaches over the last year, and the news presented to the university’s trustees yesterday can only worsen the school’s reputation. (more…)
It would have been just another run of the mill car break in, except this particular violated car belongs to a home-health care employee from St. Rita’s Medical Center in Lima, Ohio. In the car was a bag, and in the bag was the personal and medical information of 242 St. Rita’s patients.
So, what this means is that somewhere there is a cretin who is in possession of the patients’ names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, patient ID numbers. For some patients the identity theft threat is even greater because their Social Security numbers were also in the stolen bag. And for some, the privacy violation is even worse because their case managers’ and physician’s names and the details of their treatment were also stolen.
Let’s try to make something positive and hopeful of this, shall we? (more…)
Last year there were 656 reported data breaches, and—sorry to have to say it again–2009 is looking even grimmer.
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse lists only 60 reported data breaches so far this year, or an average of roughly one a day. But that relatively low incident rate belies a more sinister trend: 22 of those data breaches affected an unknown number of people.
The greatest threat to consumers’ identities is the Heartland Payment Systems hacking that first made news in January. Though the number of individual credit card account affected remains a mystery, it is known that Heartland processed roughly 100 million transactions a month. Speculation is that the total will be greater than the TJX data breach in which more than 100 million accounts were compromised.
Also on the list of unknowns are some potentially massive breaches, if not in terms of the number of records exposed, definitely in the level of identity theft hazard because of the nature or extent of information lost or stolen. (more…)
If a fitness center moves to another location, they contract with a company to pack up and move the equipment and furniture, and to clean out the building. If the movers drop and break a piece of equipment, they’re responsible for the loss.
But what if, when the movers clean out the offices, they find cabinets full of the gym members’ personal and financial information? What if the movers just toss those files in the dumpster out back with the other trash? Who’s responsible to the members? (more…)
We’re all experiencing anxiety (or outright panic) in the face of diminishing job security, escalating interest rates and sinking home values. I hate to add to the daily financial sturm und drang—and I beg your forgiveness—but you need to know about the increasing risk of identity theft related to data breaches and this recession. (more…)
As of January 2009, 11.6 million Americans are unemployed, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Jobs are hard to come by these days, and job seekers are desperately applying a shotgun approach, using headhunters, professional networking and a number of online job sites.
Unfortunately, rather than becoming full-time employees, many applicants may become identity theft victims instead. (more…)
