Take a minute to think about how many companies keep records on you. I personally have four credit cards, four investment accounts, four utility accounts, two bank accounts, a savings account and an insurance account. That is 16 businesses that keep records on me that I can name withou even blinking an eye! When you add in employers, government agencies, local businesses, schools and medical offices, this list grows very quickly.
Unfortunately, many of these companies aren’t doing a good job of protection the security and privacy of their consumer data. Here is a list of some recent data breaches:
- Around 200,000 VISA debit card account records have been accessed by thieves.
- The Los Angeles County Department of Social Services put as many as 2 million people at risk for identity theft when the department left more than a dozen boxes of sensitive personal records piled up next to an unlocked recycling bin.
- Medco, a New Jersey drug benefit company, had a laptop stolen that contained 4,600 unencrypted Social
Security numbers and birth dates. - Providence Health Systems, an Oregon based health care provider, had data tapes containing personal information and medical records on about 365,000 hospice and home health care patients stolen.
- 19,000 employees of Honeywell had their names, Social Security
numbers, and bank-account information posted on a publicly available website. - A Georgetown University server containing records on 40,000 Washington DC residents was hacked in March.
Already this adds up to a total of 628,000 stolen records over the last few months. And this is only a small sampling of the known data breach incidents that have been reported in the news. When you consider the thousands of smaller or not yet discovered incident, this number is significantly higher.
Do you feel that your personal data is safe? What do businesses, government agencies and universities need to do to protect consumer records? Share your feedback in the comments section below.