Finance & Marketing

Identity theft is a major concern and hackers are going after Americans and their wealth. If this wasn’t enough our own companies are giving our confidential records to these identity thieves. The Federal Government realized the growing concern and passed the FACT Act allowing Americans to use fraud alerts thus giving us some protection. Idenity Protection services have arisen to combat this growing epidemic and to protect our credit. These companies, such as Lifelok, place and renew fraud alerts, cancel pre-approved credit offers and include insurance to protect your finances. Though thankful for this protection more needs to be done.

Identity theft is mostly caused by thieves trying to steal the confidential data necessary to rip you off. Disturbingly, the lack of proper policies and procedures required to secure our personal records has fueled the fire. Governments and companies are exposing our personal information needlessly. Information on this from last year is below.

Lack of Proper Policies and Procedures

• Milwaukee PC exposed 65,000 credit card numbers.
• SAIC, a military contractor, announced they compromised the personal records of 580,000 military personnel when they failed to encrypt transmitted data.
• The state of Massachusetts warned 150,000 members of its Prescription Advantage insurance program that their personal records may have been stolen by an identity thief.
• In a study by The Washington Post personal information including the SSN of Colin Powell and Troy Aikmen were found in public government records on the internet. This information was readily available from land deeds. That’s a lot of homeowners with compromised personal information.
• In California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s office had the Social Security numbers, addresses and signatures of more than 650,000 Californians available for sale on a website for $6 each.
• 200,000 customers of Blockbuster in Florida had their personal records exposed when they threw out unshredded membership applications in to the trash.

Hackers

• 46,000 records of students, faculty, and staff associated with UCSF Medical Center over the past two years were available due to a compromised server.
• The Georgia Department of Human Resources warned parents of 140,000 babies born in Georgia between April 1, 2006, and March 16, 2007 that a data breach has exposed some of their personal and medical records to the risk of identity theft.
• Online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. reported that one of its databases was hacked and private information from more than 6.3 million customers was taken.
• Western Union informed about 20,000 customers of a potential compromise of their private information due to a database intrusion in which thousands of customers had their personal records stolen by hackers.
• TJX, the retailer that operates T. J. Maxx and Marshall’s lost the personal information of up to 46 million customers as criminals used a insecure wireless network in one store to gain access to the main database.
• The state of Massachusetts warned 150,000 members of its Prescription Advantage Insurance program that their private information may have been stolen by a criminal who has been caught and had already committed identity theft.
• Up to 79,000 health insurance customers of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co were affected when a database of a vendor was hacked.
• Kingston Technologies Inc., informed 27,000 customers of a data breach that took place in September of 2005.
• AT&T’s online store was hacked and personal information stolen from approximately 19,000 customers.
• Monster.com was hacked and the confidential records of 1.3 million job seekers was stolen.
• Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer had a data breach exposing the personal details of up to 34,000 workers.

20 million Americans became identity theft victims since 2005. Over 117 Million Americans had their private records exposed since 2005. This has continued in 2008 and protecting yourself from the continuing threat, whether you use an identity protection service or do it yourself, has become necessary for your financial security and the protection of your reputation. Be smart, get identity protection.