100 Million Victims of Data Theft

jcatcw writes "With the latest significant data breach — theft of a Boeing laptop with unencrypted personal information on 382,000 employees — the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse estimates that the total number of data breach victims has passed 100 million since they started tracking in February 2005. The director, Beth Givens, admits 'the number 100 million is largely a fictional number,' but it surely errs on the low side. Since California is still the only state with disclosure laws, incidents are difficult to analyze fully. However, Congress this week passed a bill requiring that the Department of Veterans Affairs report breaches."

100 million.. six months ago!

[anilg]

That according to http://attrition.org/dataloss/rant/100million.html [attrition.org]

The Data Loss Database - Open Source has almost 510 events and over 143 MILLION compromised records as of this writing. 100 million? Dudes and dudettes, we had that over six months ago.

Protect yo'self

[jomama717]

A buddy of mine was recently affected by the UCLA breach and was lamenting about all of the precautions and protections he was required to put into place now that his SS# was likely in some scumbag's hands, and it dawned on me that he may have actually gotten lucky. He was awakened to the reality of identity theft without having to experience any tangible loss, and is now motivated to take the proper precautions. It then occurred to me that to not assume that my information was in the wrong people's hands didn't make any sense and I have taken the same precautions my friend did:

1. Access to my credit report/score
2. Big 3 credit bureau monitoring - notification of any new accounts or loans in my name
3. Personal case officer (through the bank) if something happens

These services can be purchased for anywhere from $5 to $12 a month depending on the bank. I suppose I could still get burned but I can't imagine any of it could hurt, well worth the money at any rate in my mind.

Re:makes me wonder...

[davaguco]

On Europe we have a common Directive (that means its the same for all countries and it sets common guidelines that must be made into law by each nation) that establishes some measures that must be taken to protect all the personal information. On my country, companies are not allowed to store customer's personal information on a laptop, for example.

Re:Stolen from Car

[B4D BE4T]

Oh and in case anyone is interested in reading the full response from Jim McNerney (Boeing's CEO), here it is [nwsource.com].

They don't know actually

[Sycraft-fu]

The people who send you preapproved offers have very little info on you, pretty much just name and address. Basically they ask one of the credit reporting agencies for a list of people falling within a given set of criteria. They then send offers to those people. IF you want to take them up you have to give them more info and they get a full rundown of your credit and decide if they still want to give you credit, and if so on what terms (you can be turned down for preapproved cards).

You can opt out of this if you want, you have to contact the credit bureaus and tell them to quit giving out your info for this and they will.