Bank of America is the latest Fortune 500 company to expose its customers to identity theft. On Friday, they sent letters to the 1.2 million, yes million, customers whose personal information was on data tapes the company lost.

Last week news of one of the largest identity theft scandals in history broke. ChoicePoint, a spin-off of credit-reporting giant Equifax, admitted to selling the personal information of at least 145,000 people to an identity theft crime ring. So far there are 700 confirmed cases of this information being used to commit identity theft in California. Potential victims span all fifty states and several territories.

ChoicePoint was able to confirm the breach of their security on October 27th when, Olatunji Oluwatosin was arrested as part of a sting for receiving a fax with personal information at a Kinko's Store. Mr. Oluwatosin has pleaded no contest to the charges and has refused to help investigators break up the crime ring.

The crime ring used stolen identities to set up dummy companies. These companies were able to buy the personal information from ChoicePoint. Once the information was obtained, the best credit scores were taken to commit identity theft.

The scariest part of the whole story is the realization of the information that ChoicePoint so cavalierly sold. Their database holds 19 billion social security numbers, credit histories, medical histories, motor vehicle registrations, job applications, lawsuits, criminal files, professional licenses and other sensitive information. After they became aware of the security breach, ChoicePoint waited 90 days to send letters to those who had their information exposed, but only in California where a law mandates such disclosure. It was not until the protests of 38 state attorneys general did the company decide to send notification letter to everyone affected.

Advice: You can't refuse to be in the ChoicePoint database so all we can advise is to contact your state and federal representatives to let them know that the credit reporting industry needs tighter regulatory oversight.