Every living veteran is at risk of identity theft after thieves stole an electronic data file this month containing the names, birthdates and Social Security numbers from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs employee, VA Secretary R. James Nicholson said today.The theft of the data, which the employee was not authorized to take home, represents one of the most sweeping government losses of sensitive personal information, experts said. The file did not contain medical records, Nicholson said.
So no medical records, but more than enough for criminals to steal the identities of these vets and open up credit cards in their names and so on. Of course, this is all part of a larger trend of gross mishandling of sensitive ID information:
Identity theft and fraud have become a national problem in a few short years. Three years ago, federal authorities estimated that about 750,000 people fell victim to some identity scam. Now the estimate is close to 10 million.
In 2004, ChoicePoint Inc., a large commercial information firm based in Alpharetta, Ga., delivered thousands of electronic reports containing names, addresses, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, credit histories to people in the Los Angeles area posing as legitimate debt collection, insurance and other small-business officials.
At least 700 victims had their mailing addresses changed, apparently by people connected to the scheme who wanted to gain control of credit card offers, bank records and other sensitive mail. One man lost about $12,000 after his bank account was drained.
ChoicePoint generously offered the victims free credit monitoring service for a year (the same credit monitoring services that credit cards are always trying to get you to sign up for, I'm sure.) And it appears that the Dept. of Veteran Affairs is at least trying in this case. But the fact remains that ID theft is an all too common crime, and is usually the result of data companies not taking care of sensitive data. Regulation on this issue is inevitible, but I think the only effective way to prevent this sort of thing is to allow people whose ID data was stolen to sue if their data is used by criminals, or perhaps even if not. These companies are careless because they can afford to be; a few class action lawsuits and they'd begin to think twice about how they handle this data.
1 comment:
Yeah, well we definitely need to increase police protection in this area. You know, in half the cases of ID theft that I know anecdotally, the police didn't or couldn't do anything. ID theft should be simple to stop. I mean, if your credit card is used to buy $400 worth of stuff in Minnesota when you live in Florida, you shouldn't have to worry about being made responsible for it. But you're definitely right that the companies who allow this to happen need to be responsible too.
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