Standby For More Identity Theft

On the heels of the Choicepoint scandal where 35,000 identity's were stolen Bank of America announced tonight that up to 1,000,000 social security and account numbers were stolen.

What is going on? Are these corporations worthy of maintaining all of this valuable info?

The organization i used to work for fell prey to something similar to that. That led me to buy a id theft protection plan and to offer it as well.

Sorry, did not intend to give myself a plug...

"" Bank of America said Friday it lost computer tapes containing account information on 1.2 million federal employee credit cards, among them those of U.S. senators, potentially exposing them to theft or hacking.

The tapes were lost in December, but a bank spokeswoman told Reuters that bank officials were not allowed to notify cardholders until they received permission from federal law enforcement authorities.""

http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/25/news/fortune500/bank_america/index.htm?cnn=yes

well, isn't that nice. I think it's time to get the cc re-issued with new numbers.

btw, I wonder if they have ever heard of encryption.

And how may banks would say, "But... but... but that would cost us money!"

My wife found out that Wells Fargo has also supposedly had problems because they did not encrypt.

So, how much did they save?

Here's a new scheme:

My sister got a call a couple of days ago from a restaurant about "her" bad check for $117. She's never been there but the person who passed the check printed it on checkwriting software with a ficticious name and my sister's fax number.

The number was obviously picked at random but the restaurant had to file a police report and it will go on for months.

Until the penalties for identity theft increase and local LE authorities are empowored/funded to investigate/enforce, we are stuck with it! Watch your backside and stay informed!

Larry

[ QUOTE ]
Marty Weiner said:
On the heels of the Choicepoint scandal where 35,000 identity's were stolen Bank of America announced tonight that up to 1,000,000 social security and account numbers were stolen.

What is going on? Are these corporations worthy of maintaining all of this valuable info?

[/ QUOTE ]

They are definately not up to the task. This type of thing will only get worse until some solid laws/systems are put in place to make the offenders more accountable to the folks who give them their data. If these corporations had to pay for their neglegence things might begin to improve.

Unfortunately, laws protecting consumers from this type of thing are very spotty, being regional and generally very poorly thought out. Where they do exist they tend to serve more as an incentive to just cover up data loss/theft instead of preventing it.

Something will have to be done eventually buy I really can't picture Congress or the Senate getting into a position where any kind of effective solution may be proposed by them. They may have a poorer understanding of the problem than almost any other demographic out there.

Just my take.

It says some senators were effected, so perhaps we can see some legal reform.

It's too bad - encryption is even an option for some of the more popular Enterprise-level backup software suites. It would allow them to lose ( or have stolen ) their backup tapes, while all the data on them would still be protected by encryption and useless to most parties without the code cracking resources of one our 'spooky' agencies or that of a small country.

While I'm not a big fan of government regulation ( or thier involvement in most any issue ), I think it would be helpful if account data encryption was made mandatory during all phases of transmission and storage before financial institutions could qualify to be FDIC insured.

....and yes, that would be horrifically expensive and resource intensive to implement, but in this day and age, I think there is no practical way we can afford to avoid such measures.

My parents told me about this last night at dinner. They said that the company didnt get stolen of that personal information, but they SOLD it to those so called ROBBERS. I say, change stolen, to sold, and robbers, to high paying customers.

The actual scheme was to set up false accounts and get the information sent to them. The accounts certainly looked genuine to them, according to the news.

Gee, how about we make it illegal to collect such information in the first place and also to disseminate it. If I want information on a product sent to me, I want to know I requested it. I really don't like or appreciate in any way this type of marketing. So that would make the collection of this information pointless.

Basically, if I am sent unsolicited information about a company or product, it turns me off in a big way and I virtually never do business with them.