Another Credit Card Company Loses a Computer Tape – 650,000 Affected

If you get a letter in the mail from GE Money – make sure you read it. That’s the company that handles the credit cards for JCPenney as well as some other retail credit cards. One of their computer tapes, with information for about 650,000 customers, is missing and they aren’t sure where it is.

The information was on a backup computer tape that was discovered missing last October. It was being stored at a warehouse run by Iron Mountain Inc., a data storage company, and was never checked out but can’t be found either, said Richard C. Jones, a spokesman for GE Money, part of General Electric Capital Corp.

[Via Yahoo.com]

On the bright side, social security numbers were only listed for about 150,000 of the 650,000 affected. On the not so bright side, it seems like this is happening too often

Posted by Tricia on January 17, 2008 at 8:59 PM in Credit Cards | 5 Comments »
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dawn responded:
Posted: January 17th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Gosh, this sort of thing is getting to be a regular occurrence!
S.B. Davis responded:
Posted: January 18th, 2008 at 12:43 am
To me, the only newsworthy aspect of this story is the magnitude of the heist. I’m also surprised to not see similar headlines daily. Here’s why. I install pallet rack systems in these record management establishments and have been doing so for the past 14 years. I’ve installed at Bradford Systems, Chicago Records Management (CRM), and Iron Mountain (formally Pickfords), to name a few. Security in verturally nonexistant except for a few cameras. But cameras or personal are not located in the miles of aisles between 30-50 foot tall racking systems. I, or anyone else, can easily reach into any book and pull out whatever is desired. Paper or a small disc fits rather nicely in a pocket. But I’m not the threat. Nor any other vendors. No! It’s the employees of these establishments, in my opinion. You better be setting down for this next piece of information. The makeup of the employees at all the Record Management places that I have (and currently still do) installed pallet rack systems, employ–here it comes–90% Nigerians, 5% Hispanics, and the other 5% is made up of various other nationalities. Therein lies the rub (again, in my opinion). This does include the lower management in these massive warehouses. Now the percentages that I just gave, of course, are only estimates, but rest assure that they are pretty close. The reason being is cost. A majority do not speak english. You may ask how are they able to perform their jobs. Easy. The number system (the universal language)–coupled with a hand-held computing devise. Please do not take my word on any of these truisms. Do a little homework yourself or simply come back to this post and see what others may contribute in this comment section. I believe there will be some concurrence. I also believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg. One more thing. This is the very first time that I have ever made a comment in this type of forum. I hope I did it correctly. It’s just that I happen to be in a position to pass valuable information since I work in this field. Thank you.
Emily Starbuck Gerson responded:
Posted: January 18th, 2008 at 11:45 am
It’s terrible that this breaches keep happening. I just read that Suze Orman and TrustedID released an Identity Theft kit today that could be of huge help to consumers if they find themselves in this pickle. I think that’s what it’s coming to…everyone’s going to have to have some sort of ID theft insurance or protection. It’s so sad.
Zooey responded:
Posted: January 18th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
The root of this problem is that social security numbers are being used as a widespread identification tool, which they were NEVER intended or properly designed for. And we citizens (I hate the term “consumer”) pay the price.

Social security numbers were created in the early 20th century for… social security benefits. That’s it. Not everyone had one, for a couple of decades. Then it was decided that it would be a TERRIFIC “unique identifier” to tie all sorts of information about people together. Was it ever designed to be absolutely private? Not really. Were all antiquated records with social security numbers guarded under lock and key? No.

And now, social security numbers are THE number. They wouldn’t be, if so much other information weren’t piggy backed on top of social security numbers – credit cards, mortgage loans, you name it. Having such valuable information associated with a single number automatically creates a very high incentive to steal such a number, because there is great reward in doing so.

There shouldn’t be ANY number like this. Credit reporting agencies, in particular, chose it for convenience, not information security.
Ryan S. responded:
Posted: January 19th, 2008 at 3:48 am
::sigh:: I wonder how many times my Social Security number has been ripped off already. I had a semi-ID theft awhile ago (more like fraudulent credit card use), and it was a pain to clear up. Full blown ID theft would be horrible.
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Ryan
http://uncommon-cents.net/