“Lisa” writes, “I recently found out that I was a victim of identity theft.” What shocked her, and us as well, is that after Capital One notified her that they’d approved the card with another address, they followed up by sending their fraud claim to the criminal’s address instead of Lisa’s.
personal data
Woman Donates Cellphone To Charity, But It Ends Up On Ebay With Personal Info Intact
By 9.15.08
People! Always wipe your cell phone before you sell it, give it away, or trade it in. Do not assume or expect that someone else will do this for you! This was just one of the mistakes that led to Rachel Swanson being called by strangers several weeks after she thought she donated her old phone to charity. But the store that handled the donation, and the company responsible for actually processing the donated phones, screwed up their parts, too. Here’s how it was supposed to have work, and what you should always do before donating your phone to any organization.
By 9.9.08
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Google has announced that they’re shortening the duration that they keep personal data on users from 18 months to 9 months. Yay! “It’s no big deal—we’ve already got more personal info on you than we know how to monetize,” said a Google official in a totally fabricated (yet plausible) statement. [Reuters]
By 8.21.08
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Gmail recently rolled out a change to its settings, where now you can permanently turn on SSL encryption. Do it now—your personal data will thank you for it. Besides, it’s going to get a lot easier to hack Gmail sessions very soon, because some guy is planning on releasing a hacking tool to the public in order to force Google to implement better security. [monkey_bites]
Stein Mart Settles Personal Data Breach By Offering… Coupons
By 7.8.08
Stein Mart was caught “printing expiration dates and/or more than the last five digits of credit cards on receipts,” and was subsequently hit with a class action lawsuit for exposing sensitive customer data. Now they’ve settled by agreeing to run coupons in local newspapers. It gets better: instead of a flat 20% off coupon, the store is requiring minimum-purchase amounts that reduce the savings if your purchase falls between the arbitrarily set thresholds.
- $10 off a purchase of $50 or more
- $20 off a purchase of $100 or more
- $30 off a purchase of $150 or more
We need a new federal law that says class action lawyers have to be compensated in the same manner as their clients. Give those hard working guys and gals some $30-off coupons, please!
Former Employee Says TJX Security In Lawrence, Kansas Is A Joke
By 5.27.08
Remember TJX’s gigantic security breach problems last year, where data on 94 million accounts was stolen? Good for you, because apparently TJX doesn’t. A former employee of a TJX store in Lawrence, Kansas was fired recently for posting anonymous complaints online about the current sorry state of his store’s security, which included the store manager writing server login and password information on a sticky note, and the store resetting employee passwords to blank fields.
ConsumerSay Wants All Your Data, Will Give You $20 For It
By 4.2.08
Pssst, wanna make an easy $20? Just give all your bank account and personal data over to ConsumerSay, a consumer opinion and behavior tracking firm owned by Lightspeed Research. Jen, who sometimes fills out surveys for freebies and cash, got an email from them offering her $20 for only 5 to 10 minutes of her time. Oh, and all of her financial transaction data.
Red Card! MLSGear.com Shoppers Exposed To Identity Theft
By 2.12.08
Computerworld is reporting that “a series of SQL injection attacks” on a third-party e-commerce company’s servers has compromised the personal data of customers who shopped at Major League Soccer’s MLSgear.com website. One affected customer told us he received a letter from MLSgear.com letting him know what had happened and offering him free credit monitoring services for a year, which is apparently the standing corporate response to personal data theft.
iPhone Hacked, Compromising All Your Personal Data
By 7.23.07
Bleeding-edge early-adopters take note: The iPhone may be a sexy little device, but security experts have found a way to hack it and take complete control of the device. Complete and utter vulnerability. Hackers find their way into the phone via the iPhone’s version of the Safari web browser.
