Bank of NY Loses Tapes With 4.5 Million Clients' Data 156
Lucas123 brings news that Bank of New York Mellon Corp. has admitted they lost a box of unencrypted data storage tapes. The tapes contained personal information for over 4.5 million people. From Computerworld:
"The bank informed the Connecticut State Attorney General's Office that the tapes ... were lost in transport by off-site storage firm Archive America on Feb. 27. The missing backup tapes include names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, and other information from customers of BNY Mellon and the People's United Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., according to a statement by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.
Unencrypted? (Score:5, Interesting)
So when is the bank declaring bankrupcy (Score:2, Interesting)
Digital leakage is getting to be more like (Score:4, Interesting)
So what exactly is homeland security about? Its obviously not about protecting US citizens.
As a government body, shouldn't homeland security be involved in helping to prevent such digital leakage, even if just setting down the rules to follow and pursuing violators of the rules?
Always... (Score:2, Interesting)
really? again? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So when is the bank declaring bankrupcy (Score:4, Interesting)
or skip to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_run#History [wikipedia.org]
If 4.5 million people is only a fraction of the data the bank had (assuming all data they have is equal to the amount of people they cater to) then if say 20,000,000 people withdrew their money, they'd be fucked, even if they only withdrew $200
Especially considering the decline of the USD, granted, it probably wouldnt lead to a major event like the 'Great Depression' (although its possible) but it would kill that branch, break some bird eggs, make an omelet, etc.
If the "Government" bailed them out (which would technically be the bank giving the government money to bail the bank out) the USD would plummet even further to probably mere tens of pennies.
Re:So when is the bank declaring bankrupcy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:really? again? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Digital leakage is getting to be more like (Score:3, Interesting)
I am one of the people affected (Score:5, Interesting)
This page has changed since Thursday. Originally it was only one incident, now it's two. The letter said that I'd get 1 year of credit monitoring at all 3 bureaus, free; when I signed up, I was given (and the page above) two years. The letter said there was no indication that the information had been used, but it also didn't mention what the summary here says - that SSNs and birthdates were on those tapes (I assumed they were).
What really pisses me off isn't that it happened - it's that it took them three fucking months to inform me.
I have 2 accounts with them (for the same employer, which is really stupid). One account requires my SSN, the stock ticker, and a 6-digit PIN. Digits only. Not terribly secure - there's only 10^6 possible PINs, my SSN may be in someone's hands, and there are only a couple thousand stock tickers. The other is a seemingly random ID and a 6-31 digit PIN. My previous PIN was 12 characters. The new one is 31.
I reset both my PINs Thursday night, which took about half an hour - the sites, while not normally speed demons, were obscenely slow that night. I'm hoping it's because people were changing their PINs.
Re:really? again? (Score:2, Interesting)
My point was simply that it would seem prudent to plan for worst-case senerios. I would think that profit-seeking entities would someday learn how profitable risk management can be, in the long run.
Yes, I'm also aware "the long run" doesn't seem to be in our current corporate culture's lexicon. Hmm... it's possible I just answered one of my own questions.
That's fine - just pay reasonable compensation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So when is the bank declaring bankrupcy (Score:3, Interesting)
:-) Just thought that wording was interesting!