EDIT - Repost - Veterans Information Stolen!

[Richard Kolb]

I'm sure that most of have heard, but every veteran who has seperated since 1975 has had their names, ssn, and dob stolen. There are articles all over the place about it, but if you are in that group you should protect yourself. www.firstgov.gov has a link to an article on the main page as well as phone numbers and websites of places you can go to help prevent fraud. You should also call your financial institutions to alert them to the possible problem.



EDIT - Sorry, I had off-topic messages hidden and didn't see this was already posted.

 

[P M]

Excuse me, Mr Secretary, Is there indication it is NOT being used for fraud? :angry:

 

[Richard L]

I think the Analyst who took the 26.5 Million names, dob's and SSN's home on a disk needs to be fired and questioned more detail.



I have been in IT for nearly 40 years and I cannot comprehend what this idiot's motivation was to take all that data home. He could not possibly do any realistic research or testing of 26.5 million records on a home PC. I suspect that he took the records with the intension of selling them and used the burglary as a cover up.



Also, data security at VA must be pretty poor if someone who works there and is entrusted with access to the information can bring in a portable harddive and download the database without anyone noticing. Most of the big thefts of computer data have been found to be inside jobs, and I don't think this one is any different.



...Rich

 

[Shawn Hennessy]

Nice. Anyone notice how the VA didn't mention assistance for veterans' identity theft damages?



Something just isn't adding up with this. It seems there is more to this story than they are telling us. How does someone walk out with 26+ million records on disk?



I work for a bank. There's no way in hell I could push customer information down to a series of CDs that I could walk out with. Too many safeguards in place to prevent this. The data couldn't be contained on only a handful of disks.



Sounds extremely fishy.

 

[Richard Kolb]

Well, the weakest link in security is the people. There is NO WAY, and people can swear to the otherside but they're wrong, I repeat, NO WAY, for someone to stop someone who wants to steal information from a company from doing it. There are too many ways for people to steal info for you to be 100% successful in stopping it. You'd have to do a strip and full caveity search on everyone to stop it. The problem is with trusting the wrong people, not with their security measures.