SO annoyed with former college re: id theft

[SunshineJ]

I received a letter today from the college I began my grad school program at. It was informing me that this was their 2nd letter (1st I've received) and that their database was breached. My information was stolen, including my name, ss#, dob and address! If I haven't yet heard from police then there's no evidence my data has been misused. They're offering a 1 yr enrollment in some Triple Alert credit monitoring service, but seriously, how the heck could they let this happen. Do they not have security protocols in place? (Ok, I know they do, and always thought they were lax but figured I was being overly critical. Guess not!) Aaargh!!!!

[pumpkin]

The truth is that this happens all the time. This won't be the only entity that sends you one of these letters.
Its surprisingly easy for this to happen. It can be as simple as a hard drive that turns up missing on an inventory check because it fell behind something in someones office. No harm is done but since they can't account for the data they legally have to send out those letters.

[annethcz]

I agree, that kind of stuff can happen anywhere, anytime. Yes, there are back-up security measures in place (which is probably why they knew about the breach to begin with), but all it takes is one person to deliberately or accidentally break protocol.

As an aside, I used to own an online retail business. I was so surprised when I started about how easy it was to get customer's credit card information. Although it would've been highly unethical and against the agreements I had with my credit card processors, it would've been very easy to save customer information including credit card numbers and even the 3 digit security code on the back of the card.

You just never know...

[Fujiko]

Originally Posted by annethcz

I agree, that kind of stuff can happen anywhere, anytime. Yes, there are back-up security measures in place (which is probably why they knew about the breach to begin with), but all it takes is one person to deliberately or accidentally break protocol.

As an aside, I used to own an online retail business. I was so surprised when I started about how easy it was to get customer's credit card information. Although it would've been highly unethical and against the agreements I had with my credit card processors, it would've been very easy to save customer information including credit card numbers and even the 3 digit security code on the back of the card.

You just never know...

I used to work at a well-known housewares retail chain. I was the front end lead, and I had full access to the cash office and the computers in them. Technically I wasn't part of management, but treated as though I was, and I had full access to every single FULL credit card number and expiration date (although not the 3 digit security code) through those computers. I was often unsupervised while I was in the cash office, counting out the cash registers in the evening. There were about three of us college student part-timers that had this kind of access at any given time. I could have stolen thousands of numbers over the course of my employ. (But of course I never did.) Scary.

[Ruthie's momma]

Such a breach can, and does, happen all too often. DH and I have received several such letters (former university, insurance company, bank, and cc company). Plus, one of DH's laptops was stolen a year and a half ago. All of these "breaches" have exposed our personal information.

In this day, a lot of our privacy has been virtually eliminated. We all just need to remain vigilant. Here are some good tips:

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/20020612a.asp

[marisa724]

Something similar happened to me, with the records from my high school. I got a very similar letter.

They had been burglarized and a computer with sensitive information on it was stolen. Luckily it did not seem to have any repercussions for me, as far as identity theft. It was unfortunate but I don't really see what else they could have done -- I'm sure the building was alarmed, etc -- and the information needed to be stored somewhere.