HEADS UP - Veteran's Personal Data Stolen

[jwinch2]

CNN just reported that a computer disk containing the birthday, names, and social security numbers of every United States Armed Forces Veteran since 1975 has been stolen from the home of a government employee. The employee was in violation of US Code by bringing the disk out of his office at Veteran's affiars and has been suspended pending an ivestigation.

Over 26 Million veterans are affected by this.

Just a heads up so that the other Vet's on the board can remember to keep an eye on their credit reports...

[Prince Loeffler]

CNN just reported that a computer disk containing the birthday, names, and social security numbers of every United States Armed Forces Veteran since 1975 has been stolen from the home of a government employee. The employee was in violation of US Code by bringing the disk out of his office at Veteran's affiars and has been suspended pending an ivestigation.

Over 26 Million veterans are affected by this.

Just a heads up so that the other Vet's on the board can remember to keep an eye on their credit reports...


Friking Amazing ! As if these Veterans have not suffered enough serving our country ! Now they have to brace themselves with another war. :mad:

[David Craik]

This seems pretty common nowadays. A couple years ago Bank of America (who issues the mandatory Govt. credit card - and there's a subject in iteself :rolleyes: ) lost two tapes full of active duty service members' data...names, SSNs, credit card info causing hundreds to have to file fraud alerts. And then a few months ago some graduate student at the Naval Academy who was working on some paper or another lost his thumb drive which contained thousands of Active duty Marines' data. Why they have some goofy little midshipman running around with thousands of servicemembers' actual records on a geek stick is quite beyond me.

For all their OPSEC and supposed safeguards, personal information seems to be very sloppily treated across the board. I mean, there I am in Iraq dutifully burning or obliterating anything with a name or address on it (both mine and the sender's) - packages, letters, envelopes- so the hajjis won't dig it out of the trash; yet there is some wanna-be officer in a Good Humor uniform back stateside merrily losing the personal info of thousands for the sake of some absurd academic paper that probably doesn't have the slightest use in the first place.

[KayJay]

[QUOTE=David Craik]This seems pretty common nowadays. A couple years ago Bank of America (who issues the mandatory Govt. credit card - and there's a subject in iteself :rolleyes: )

Scream! Pulls hair out! :shoot:

[Maro]

In the news of here in Oz a Brigadier General is up for the chop after leaving a CD in a public PC at Melbourne Airport. The report on the CD contained details of the stuff-up returning an Aussie Soldiers body back to Australia.

I can't believe how stupid you'd have to be to use a Public PC for this? Don't they issue laptops to brass?

[jwinch2]

Here is a link to an article on this topic...

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,98150,00.html

[TonyU]

Interestingly enough, today I recieved a letter from the Department Veterans Affairs in referance to the stolen data.

[rgoad]

Don't know if it's related, but my home lender just notified that we had also had our data stolen from them, too. Not sure what to think. My personal problems are going to be aggrivating, but one has to wonder how all this could be used.