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Indiana Data Theft Compromises 700,000
palewook writes "A Midwest collection company, Central Collection Bureau, admits a server and eight PCs stolen contain over 700,000 individuals' personal data. Central Collection Bureau acts as a collection contractor for doctors and utility companies. The Indiana based company admits the stolen info consists of addresses, social security numbers, and medical codes."
The "good news" is that these "CNN events" are pretty common, and people aren't so fazed by them any more. And the public's attention span is woefully short, so the damage won't last more than a couple of weeks from a PR standpoint. Now if there are contract penalties for a breach, that's a different story altogether.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Wow. Here in Maine 4.2 million (yes million!) credit/debit cards were compromised by Hannaford Brothers, a grocery store chain. The company knew about for months, but never told their customers. Here's the latest news: http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=183060&ac=PHnws
Then I guess you'd be suprised how many people with above-average or better credit have collection accounts on their credit reports.
Health care providers are notorious for making almost no effort whatsoever to track down old patients that they forgot to bill for some random lab work. It's far easier (or in some cases more profitable) for them to just call it a loss, take the tax write-off, and sell the debt to a collection agency for pennies on the dollar.
It's to the point where most creditors simply ignore healthcare-related collection accounts in many cases. For example, my wife has such an account on her report (albeit, for a relatively small amount of money), and every single mortgage lender we talked to when buying our first home said they would not factor it into their decision since it was a healthcare-related account.