How Corporations Loose Your Identity

What would you do if you heard on the news that a trusted company that you frequently do business with just announced that personal information from their customers had been stolen from their computer system by a hacker?

• In April of 2005, information publisher Reed Elsevier publicly announced that the personal information of as many as 310,000 people was unknowingly exposed to scammers on his LexisNexis databases during the previous month. Personal information that was stolen included names, addresses, Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers.

• In January of 2005, data provider ChoicePoint admitted it had mistakenly provided the personal data of 150,000 people to approximately 50 fake fronts for businesses which were actually rings of thieves.

• In February of 2005, Bank of America lost computer tapes containing information on customers in the government’s SmartPay charge card program. The number of identities affected is estimated at 1.2 million.

• In June, 2005 Citifinancial began notifying 3.9 million customers that their information had been lost – including social security numbers, addresses and payment histories.

Many large online financial institutions are hurrying to find ways to fix website flaws that put users at risk of phishing attacks. Particularly disturbing were some new phishing scenarios that could allow the hackers to steal financial date from within a bank’s website, even if the bank used SSL security features.

Unfortunately, the market that exists in consumer data represents an accident waiting to happen. Companies such as ChoicePoint make their profits by legally selling lists of people and their personal information to marketing companies. When they loose that information your identity is gone.

What happens when those packets of information fall into the wrong hands? Hundreds of thousands, even millions of people could become victims of identity theft as a result of one hacker attack or a corporate mistake. Notice again, none of us can prevent these losses of personal information. In fact, these events can make any of us a victim no matter what id theft prevention steps we have taken. In these cases the only help identity theft victims can get is identity theft restoration.

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