I head this in the radio yesterday and it made my day. From the mighty tower building in Charlotte NC, Bank of America admits that some DLT computer backup tapes were swiped by cargo handlers late in December. The tapes were on their way to a backup data center. The tapes included info. On 1.2 million federal employees who use smart pay change cards for travel and expenses. Makes you want to think about shredding your BOFA and Fleet credit cards! Financial data lost by Bank of America, Boston Globe, Feb 26 "Bank of America Corp. has lost tapes containing personal financial information for 1.2 million accounts of federal employees, including US senators and members of the Defense Department. The tapes contained personal information, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and account numbers for employees in several government agencies. The lost information, which the bank was transporting to a backup data center, could make those customers vulnerable to identity theft. Bank of America first discovered in December that the tapes had been lost and alerted the Secret Service, but it did not make the loss public until yesterday. A Bank of America spokeswoman, Alexandra Trower, said the bank waited to contact customers until federal law-enforcement authorities concluded their investigation and gave the bank permission. According to a spokesman for the Defense Department, 900,000 of the customers were defense employees. . . . The lost data tapes included the personal information of US Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, his spokeswoman said yesterday. ''There were some senators' Visa credit card accounts involved," the spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler, said. ''We don't know how many, but he was one of them."" http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/02/26/financial_data_lost_by_bank_of_america/ http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D88FR38O0.htm BOFA Bio: http://www.hoovers.com/bank-of-america/--ID__58444--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml
Maybe if a few senators' identities are at risk, they will realize that the issuing of credit, or opening accounts, based only on receiving identifying information that matches someones identity, and not on some reliable mechanism authenticating that the actual person intends to authorize opening an account, is foolishness. Every party you have done business with has in their possession what they need to steal your identity. It is as if you had to give a copy of your house key to anyone whenever you received medical care, attended a school, opened a bank account, got hired, etc. And they are free to hand out copies of your key to anyone they like, without liability for the results. But you can never rekey your house! Absurd!
