The news media reported last week that a Veterans Administration employee brought home a laptop without authorization, and in the laptop was a disk containing the names, birthdates, and social security numbers of over a quarter million veterans who have retired from the military since 1975. Well, his home was broken into, the laptop stolen, and you guessed it...that disk is floating around out there somewhere. In addition, the employee did not report the theft right away.
Supposedly now, the VA is in the process of tracking down the names on the disk, and notifying those who could be affected.
I know that we have some military retirees on the board besides Bea and myself. Maybe it would be worthwhile to notify all three credit bureaus and put a hold on your credit report, so that no one can open accounts in your name.
This is becoming such a problem. Someone stole a computer at the YMCA in Providence that contained similar information about members, but it also included banking and credit card information.

By Ginny~moderator on Saturday, June 3, 2006 - 11:09 am:

Unfortunately, the "hold" is only good for a limited time - I think 90 days. So that's not much help.

On this same note, I read this morning that a Humana insurance employee accessed, through a hotel computer, a spreadsheet listing 17,000 Medicare insureds who had signed up for Humana's Part D prescription program, and forgot to erase it. One of Humana's security employees found it a few weeks later on the same hotel computer. And, of course, the spreadsheet included SS numbers and names and addreses. Human is notifying the 17,000 people and is paying for a year of credit report monitoring for them. (And, of course, even if the Humana employee had "erased" it, it wouldn't really be erased and could be accessed by anyone who is computer savvy for some time, until it was overwritten. We all know that delete doesn't really mean erased. I can't imagine why anyone would use a hotel supplied computer, given all of the security and privacy risks.)

I read recently that about a dozen states have passed laws which require the credit reporting agencies to allow you, if you live in one of those states, to lock your credit reports with a PIN, and unlock it with the PIN when you yourself apply for credit. But the credit card companies and lending entities are fighting this, saying that consumers don't want to have to go through the bother of a PIN when they want credit. Personally, I'd rather go through the bother. Instant credit is, I think, part of the problem.