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Chase Data for 2.6 Million Ends up in Landfill
svonkie writes to mention a ComputerWorld story about some bad news from some 2.6 Million Chase credit card customers. These folks are being told that tape backups with their information were mistakenly thrown away back in July. There's apparently no need to worry about possibility of compromised personal information; the company believes the tapes were destroyed at a landfill. Just the same, "To prevent similar incidents, Chase said it is strengthening its security procedures and is conducting a review of all data storage and protection processes. Chase began notifying the affected customers about the incident yesterday and said the process is expected to take two to three weeks. The company is offering one year of free credit monitoring to people whose Social Security numbers were on the tapes."
if they think the tapes were destroyed, how do they know exactly which card numbers were on the tapes? I mean they may know the bulk, but not all, right? or would they? If they got rid of the tapes, would the still have the indexes?
Company spokesman says, "Ooops. Our bad. Please, Mr. Government, whatever you do to punish us, don't give us lots of money. We hate that." Government officials are trying to determine how much money to punish them with.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The article summary posted above fails to mention that these were Circuit City credit customers. That is a very important bit of info as many retail credit card holders often have no idea who the issuing bank is.
I say they nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The FTC website gives good explanation of how you can get a free credit report. You can get one per year for free (as parent mentioned), but you can also get them in other situations, such as if you are the victim of identity theft, or if you are unemployed, etc.. They lay out a few examples of how you can get one in the linked document.
Someone got an expired credit card number of mine and did some damage on eBay, lucky only for about $200. It still took me approximately 30 hours of my time just to clear the shit up with AOL, eBay, PayPal, and the collection agency that originally contact me. I also filed a local police report, contacted the FTC, and Equifax. By law one of the major credit agencies has to provide you with a free credit report in those situations. I'm not sure if anything can be done if your information was just "lost", rather than "stolen", but you are atleast guaranteed the free credit report each year regardless.