[ghporter]

How many of us here are potentially affected by the (ludicrous and probably criminally inept) loss of millions of veterans' personal information? I am, as is my wife-I retired in 2004, and she served for over 8 years before mobing on to a new career. But we both are in the VA system (as is just about every veteran), and are both potentially at risk for identity theft.

I'll point out that Equifax is the only one of the three credit bureaus that makes a point of helping vets do something about this; we both have temporary fraud alerts on our files now because Equifax has a toll free phone number that takes your request and distributes it to the other two bureaus. Go here to see what to do. It takes more steps and seems less straightforward on Experian's site, and Transunion doesn't do anything more than point you to their basic fraud information page.

I'm worried and angry about this. What about you?

[eltrut]

My wife retired just last year. I'm not sure to what extent her information was among the one stolen. The least the VA could do is notify those that are affected.

[powerbook867]

It upsets me that this seems to be happening all over the United States. I am a vet as well, and I don't like to dwell on these matters. Unfortunately a majority of the time you don't know the individual identity theft has occurred till it is too late...

I will say this much though if it makes you feel any better...I am a storage person (used to do EMC storage, am now doing IBM work) at the enterprise level. This is the place where many times tapes get lost or stolen. Encryption is coming down the pipe at this level and it is encrypted on the tape in many cases. Companies have to pay a LOT of money out of their pockets when data is lost. I believe the number is 90 dollars a person per record lost.

Corporations are getting woken up daily and hopefully more will get a grasp of the big picture. Data loss to thieves is going to cost them. Unfortunately, the VA is not big business and some of us are going to pay for their loss of our personal info.

See , now you've made me think about it and I'm bothered more. Thanks for the Equifax link...

[ghporter]

eltrut, the VA says they're working on notifying everyone who might be affected. Since there are more than 26 million of us, this will take some time...

Powerbook, I used to do computer security in the Air Force-I was THE computer security guy for several squadrons I was assigned to. To lose data is insanely bad practice, particularly through having people walk out the door with it and take it home. I'm pretty darn angry myself.

[powerbook867]

There are so many companies that I know about losing 100's of thousands of records...I have heard of a many companies that off site storage of tapes is "who's turn is it to keep them in their car this week...."

I'm not talking about mom and pop pizza shops either....I'm not happy about it myself. I just don't think a lot of companies realize how important their data is until something bad happens to it...

Believe me, the company I work for and myself when I go out on sales calls try to enlighten our customers as much we can. It unfortunately tends to get put on the back burner until someone gives these folks a scare (potential loss) or an actual loss. Then the phone starts ringing....

[eltrut]

Wonder what happens to the guy who took the data home without authorization ?