Data Theft: Once More Unto the Breach... June has been a good month for credit card and identity thieves. At the start of the month CitiGroup's consumer financial division, CitiFinancial, started notifying 3.9 million US customers that computer tapes containing information about their accounts have been lost. The tapes, containing information including Social Security numbers and payment histories, were lost by UPS while in transit to a credit bureau. A week later Motorola revealed that a pair of computers containing personal information on employees were stolen from the office of a third party contractor in Chicago. Names and Social Security number were among the material on the computers. Finally, at the end of this week, it was reported that security at the credit card transaction processing company CardSystems Solutions had resulted in the exposure of 40 million credit cards including 22 Visa cards and 14 million MasterCards. In this case the hacker had installed a script that searched out certain types of card transaction data. This is interesting, to put it mildly. Have you noticed that ever since California passed a law requiring disclosure there has been a rash of these reports of personal information theft? Now, personally, I can see two possible reasons for this sudden outbreak. The first is that there was always this level of data compromise, but that the companies involved hushed it up so as not to damage their reputations. 'Surely not!' I hear you cry - these are respectable companies who would never stoop so low. OK, OK. Let me give you the alternative. When California passed its law mandating reporting of these sort of security breaches, all the data thieves got together and said 'Lets start a campaign against respectable companies by stealing their data. We've avoided doing this before because there was no publicity in it for us. Now we will enhance our reputations and make them look foolish'. (Cue evil laughter and fade out a picture of a bunch of middle aged men wearing masks and striped t-shirts). And pigs might fly. http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/17/news/master_card/index.htm?cnn=yes
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