Another Stolen Laptop/Stolen Personal Information Story

[mcscajun]

//** begin rant

No, not a government story this time, but a corporate one, proving that no matter how careful you are, your personal information may escape your control and get loose 'in the wild'. I got a lovely :sarcasm: letter in the mail tonight from a benefits consulting firm that provides services to my former place of employment (from which I am retired and from which I still receive benefits) informing me that laptops (plural) had been stolen from them containing, among that of many others, MY PERSONAL DATA!

Oh, and it's two and a half months AFTER the fact, but they say they have a good reason. On the good side (there's a GOOD SIDE?) they're paying for all those impacted to get one year's free service (Equifax Credit Watch^TM Gold with 3-in-1 Monitoring) to allow us to closely monitor any changes to our credit records. Should I feel better? I don't think so.

"We are writing to notify you about an incident that may affect your personal information held by (firm omitted), a benefits consulting firm. In some cases, to perform consulting services to (firm omitted), we have access to some of your personal information. On December 1, 2006, we learned that laptops, later determined to contain information about you, including your name and Social Security number, had been stolen from our offices. We deeply regret that this situation occurred and are keenly aware of how important your personal information is to you."

Although we have no reason to believe that your information has been misused....we want to inform you of the situation and suggest some steps you can take to protect yourself. We also promptly reported the theft to law enforcement authorities, who for a period of time requested that we delay this notification to avoid any possible impediment to their investigation....All of our laptops and e-mail accounts are password-protected, and some files are password-protected as well. We believe this lowers the risk of someone accessing the information to commit fraud....We are continuing to enhance our data security to meet the ever changing requirements to maintain confidentiality of your data.

I worked in IT for a long time, and I did system security; knowing what I know about most PC users and most passwords, this bit about password-protection isn't making me feel all that much better. Oh yeah, they're also locking the barn door now that the horse has been stolen:

This includes encrypting all of our laptop computers, which will virtually eliminate the risk of someone accessing information. In addition, we have engaged an information security firm to review our policies and procedures in the context of this incident to help us assess our areas of vulnerability, target areas for improvement, and implement necessary changes.
This means, of course, that nothing on the stolen laptops had been encrypted before. MORONS!

Although we have no knowledge of any misuse of your nformation...
Oh, that makes me feel SO much better. :sarcasm:

You may want to consider placing an initial fraud alert on your credit file, which stays on your credit report for 90 days.
Ya' think!!?!?!? Plus I get to "closely monitor" all my accounts and credit reports for at least the next year; that's a lot of looking over my shoulder. Argh. x(

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience or concerns this incident may cause.
Blah, blah, blah...

The letter is signed by the firm's Chief Information Security Officer. Anyone want to guess if he's the same bozo that was in place at the time of the theft?

//** end rant

[mcscajun]

1. Kick.

:kick:

[wildhorses]

2. well, that sucks---sorry to read it

:/

[mcscajun]

3. Thanks. I posted this half to rant, and half to educate.

Some things you just gotta share.