Wow, I didn't see THAT coming.

The "Free ID theft" link goes to something about a food fight.

@Ariah: scroll.

EDS is consultant/outsourcer for a lot for state/federal government agencies. Even if their contract doesn't say so, they had to step up to the plate or their name would be ruined in one of their strongest markets. Hence, they're offering something real.

Well, at least they're taking this seriously and they're serious about it.

Everyone affected should be able to get anew SS number, that would teach the states to be more careful. They also need to start cracking down on companies that us SS numbers as customer numbers. There's a lot of talk about SS numbers but I really don't see anyone taking steps to actually make them as private as they should be.

The city of Nashville is doing the same thing after allowing the theft of a couple of computers from the elections office that contained - unencrypted - names and SSNs of every registered voted in the county, mine included. Well, it's not ID theft insurance or monitoring - it's just a fraud alert placed every 90 days.

EDS doesn't employ the best nor the brightest. This "oversight" is par for the course for them--a search reveals similar issues in the UK.

*EDS doesn't employ the best nor the brightest.*

You might have a future with them, since you don't know the "neither/nor" rule.

Living in WI, I can say that our state government is a bunch of idiots when it comes to anything like this. Not only have they failed to supervise vendors properly (resulting in two SSN "indicidents"), but also every month we read about how IT projects within the government that have been outsourced are millions over budget, years behind schedule, and a mess overall. Glad to see our high tax dollars at work! Also, it's been shown that identity thieves know that only one year of monitoring is the norm, so they typically hold on to any SSNs gathered for at least a few years prior to doing anything with them, knowing that the vast majority will not pay to renew the service. Fun times!!

Ohhh, it's EDS. That explains a lot.

They embody "the lowest bidder".

(Former EDS call center employee)

FLUIDDRUID: Yes- EDS is when you don't want to hire an Indian Company (to prevent PR backlash), but don't want to pay the higher rates of companies like IBM or Accenture.

EDS has provided crappy service for years. Do a google search for NMCI sucks. It is the EDS maintained network used by the Navy.

@j-damn: Where in my comment did I use neither? Nor is a word that is commonly used without being part of a neither-nor negative phrase.

I see you're new here. We don't take kindly to misinformed grammar police nor grammar Nazis. See?

To make this comment relevant, EDS is dangerously close to losing a multi-million dollar contract for California Medicaid (aka Medi-Cal) for clusterf***ing the terms of the current contract.

That identity theft service is crap and just a way for the vendor to [make people feel good | get their contract supervisors off their back]. I'm in the armed forces and we got a similar service about a year ago from an incident that happened with the VA. I tried to use it, but the specs on the service are incredibly restrictive and totally one-sided towards the vendor (ie, *not* consumer-friendly). This identity theft service is only marginally - and a very slim margin at that - better than what a consumer is entitled to thru federal law.

@ARP: Hmmm..funny, because IBM actually brings in people from India sometimes

That's what we get for allowing our government to use the lowest bidder rather than the best qualified.