| Little Laptops, Big Problems |
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In recent months, there have been several high-profile incidents of laptops containing unsecured personal data -- including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and financial information -- disappearing from business offices, homes, and cars all over America.
- In Dec. 2005, Ford Motor Company lost a laptop containing information on 70,000 of its workers.
- January 2006, Ameriprise saw the disappearance of a laptop containing data on 215,000 Ameriprise customers and advisors from a car.
- Feb. 2006, The Providence Health Care hospital system revealed that a laptop containing data on thousands of its patients had been stolen in Dec. 2005.
- Feb. 2006, Deloitte & Touche left a laptop containing data on employees of the McAfee software security company in an airplane seat pocket.
- March 2006, Verizon lost two laptops containing data on employees.
Company security analysts need to be asking why employees are taking incredibly detailed personal information about other employees and customers from secured, on-site networks, and storing it on easily accessible laptop computers, often with little or nothing in the way of security protection.
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| DOJ: Identity theft hit 3.6M families |
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Wondering how likely you are to have your credit card number stolen? Well, according to a comprehensive survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, identity theft is affecting millions of households in the U.S each year and costing an estimated $6.4 billion per year. About 3% of all households in the U.S., totaling an estimated 3.6 million families, were hit by some sort of ID theft during the first six months of 2004, according to DOJ data.
The data comes from the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey, which interviews members of 42,000 households across the country every six months to better understand the nature, frequency and consequences of crime. Households that participate in the survey are selected at random and then interviewed by DOJ statisticians twice a year for three years.
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| From the Desk of Prof. Obvious |
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The privacy notices stuffed into envelopes with bank and brokerage-firm statements and credit card bills aren't getting much of a reading from consumers and are too complicated for most to understand, regulators say.
The notices from financial institutions disclosing their privacy policies, required by law, should be simpler, shorter and better designed so that consumers can understand them, said the report issued Friday.
Commissioned by the Federal Reserve and other bank regulatory agencies, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the report concluded that consumers are overwhelmed by complex information and that a new form of privacy notice is needed.
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