Slashdot Mirror
Data Theft and Corporate Irresponsibility?
cjsnell asks: "Today, I received a letter from a student loan provider notifying me that my name and social security number had been stolen along with a contractor's computer. This makes -four- agencies that have lost my personal information, in the last year. Today's letter was the most disappointing yet: the company, Texas Guaranteed, did not offer any credit report monitoring like the previous three had. Their advice? Send a letter to the credit bureaus. Gee, thanks. Clearly, mass identity theft is completely out of hand and there doesn't seem to be any government regulation for handling these situations, nor does there seem to be any punitive action against businesses that lose customers' data. Do we, as consumers, have any recourse against these businesses?"
Forward all of your bills to them.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
Tell them that if you don't get your credit card watched, you're going to burn the place down. Burn it to the ground, and then take a vacation in some far off tropical place.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
Yeah, go to another company and steal their computers.
"Do we, as consumers, have any recourse against these businesses?"
There's always the solution from Fight Club.
Oops. I'm not supposed to talk about that. Forget I said anything, will ya?
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Why don't you set up a website that collects information about those who have been actually hurt by identity theft and trace it back to its source company if possible. Then give that information to a land shark for a fee. You could make $200-300 thousand.
In the name of the Libertarian Party, I would like to speak on this issue.
I'm appalled by all the anticapitalist rhetoric that is being spewed on Slashdot regarding the corporate use of your personal information and the occasional leak of your SSN into the wrong hands.
You people talk like you want absolute ownership over your personal information. Like you want a corporation - an entity that only exists for the purpose of maximizing net profit - to take responsibility for handling your personal information. Then you'll be holding them liable for mishandling your info. Do you realize what damage this will do to corporate profits?
That utterly reeks of communism. What's next? Treating your personal information as your own property to be handled on your terms and not theirs? Heck, if we follow that line of reasoning, the Government will have to intrude even further into our lives and implement a law to treat personal information brokers like Choicepoint and Unicru as potential data pirates. I can see it now: the Digital Millenium Privacy Act.
Corporations made America, and now you pink commies are about to create a kleptocracy in the name of your overzealous attack on public access to personal information. Sheesh.
[...end Right wing parody]
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
...maybe we should go ahead and just post all our personal info on the web ourselves, and save these idiots the trouble? "Haha, nothing to steal now, b17ch3z!"
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
keep your credit rating low. like i do.