Identity theft is a growing problem and hackers from all over the world are targeting Americans and the American economy. It is almost impossible to catch these hackers let alone prosecute them. On top of this our own institutions are handing these identity thieves our personal information on a golden platter. To address this new threat our Federal Government passed the FACT Act, which gave us some protection by allowing us to place fraud alerts, but more needs to be done by all parties. Id protection services have sprung up to fight the growing epidemic and to protect our credit. Companies such as Lifelok, place and renew fraud alerts, remove pre-approved credit offers and provide guarantees that protect us from the financial risk associated with identity theft. Americans still remain vulnerable to criminal and medical identity theft but at least our creditis protected.

Identity theft is usually caused by thieves who are looking to steal the private information they need to rip off Americans but the new disturbing trend is the lack of proper procedure and policies required to secure our personal information. Governments and companies are exposing our private information needlessly. Here are some examples from 2007 followed by compromised data due to hackers.

Insecure Procedures and Policies

• In California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s office had the SS#’s, addresses and names of more than 650,000 Californians available for sale on a website for $6 each.
• The state of Massachusetts warned 150,000 members of its Prescription Advantage insurance program that their personal information may have been snatched by an identity thief.
• 200,000 customers of Blockbuster in Florida had their personal information exposed when they threw out unshredded membership applications in to the trash.
• Milwaukee PC compromised 65,000 credit card numbers.
• SAIC, a military contractor, announced they compromised the personal information of 580,000 military personnel when they failed to encrypt transmitted data.
• In a study by The Washington Post personal information including the SSN of Colin Powell and Troy Aikmen were found in public government records on the internet. This information was readily available from land deeds. That’s a lot of homeowners with compromised personal information.

Hackers

• TJX, the retailer that operates T. J. Maxx and Marshall’s lost the personal information of up to 46 million customers as criminals used a insecure wireless network in one store to gain access to the main database.
• Up to 79,000 health insurance clients of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co were affected when a database of a vendor was hacked.
• 46,000 records of students, faculty, and staff associated with UCSF Medical Center over the past two years were accessible via a compromised server.
• The Georgia Department of Human Resources warned parents of 140,000 babies born in Georgia between April 1, 2006, and March 16, 2007 that a security breach has exposed some of their personal and medical information to the risk of identity theft.
• Western Union notified about 20,000 customers of a potential compromise of their personal data due to a database intrusion in which thousands of customers had their personal information stolen by hackers.
• Kingston Technologies Inc., notified 27,000 customers of a data breach that took place in September of 2005.
• AT&T’s online store was hacked and personal records stolen from approximately 19,000 customers.
• Monster.com was hacked and the private information of 1.3 million job seekers was stolen.
• Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer had a data breach compromising the personal details of up to 34,000 workers.
• Online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. reported that one of its databases was hacked and personal information from more than 6.3 million clients was taken.
• The state of Massachusetts warned 150,000 members of its Prescription Advantage Insurance program that their personal records may have been stolen by a criminal who has been caught and had already committed identity theft.

Over 115 Million Americans have had their personal information compromised in the last three years and there has already been 25 million identity theft victims. The trend continues in 2008 and protecting yourself from this continuing threat of identity theft is necessary for your financial safety. It does not matter if you use an id protection service or do it yourself. What does matter is that you realize the inherent dangers and start to protect yourself and your loved ones before it’s too late.