Privacy Is No Longer Guaranteed In The Digital Age
It's a story that seems to be repeated over and over.
I've received the letters from various companies advising that my or my wife's confidential information might have been released to third parties by mistake or by information theft. I bet there will come a time when everyone in America has had their private financial data inadvertently or intentionally released.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Citigroup's ABM AMRO Mortgage Group experienced a data leak recently when three spreadsheets containing over 5,000 social security numbers had been released.
It's time to move away from linking all financial records to people's social security numbers and instead require that financial institutions and other entities assign their own unique account numbers to customers. There's too much abuse of social security numbers for them to be the unique identifier of Americans. The debate over immigration and people working without employment authorization is just one example of how social security numbers have been abused.
It's also a good reminder to make sure to monitor your credit reports for any strange activity.
Placing a fraud alert with the major credit bureaus might also be a worthwhile endeavor, especially if one or more of your financial institutions has allowed your information out of its grasp.
I've received the letters from various companies advising that my or my wife's confidential information might have been released to third parties by mistake or by information theft. I bet there will come a time when everyone in America has had their private financial data inadvertently or intentionally released.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Citigroup's ABM AMRO Mortgage Group experienced a data leak recently when three spreadsheets containing over 5,000 social security numbers had been released.
It's time to move away from linking all financial records to people's social security numbers and instead require that financial institutions and other entities assign their own unique account numbers to customers. There's too much abuse of social security numbers for them to be the unique identifier of Americans. The debate over immigration and people working without employment authorization is just one example of how social security numbers have been abused.
It's also a good reminder to make sure to monitor your credit reports for any strange activity.
Placing a fraud alert with the major credit bureaus might also be a worthwhile endeavor, especially if one or more of your financial institutions has allowed your information out of its grasp.
Labels: ABN AMRO, Citigroup, identity theft, mortgages, social security numbers released
posted by Chris Hedges at
2:52 PM
2 Comments:
Good post, Chris.
I remember when the Veterans Admin had a laptop stolen that one of their employees took home (without authorization to do so) and I got a letter since I had been in the Navy. It was unsettling to think someone might have my personal info, such as SSN.
Hi Donna,
It's great to hear from you!
We've had this happen a couple of times with two mortgage companies and a company that processes checks for merchants. I suspect that my family will have to have credit monitoring for an indefinite period of time.
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