Identity Theft Blog by Truston

Credit Bureaus Sued Over Practices That Lower Credit Scores

Jim at GuardMyCreditFile exposes this questionable practice by the consumer credit reporting companies.

Attorneys for William A. Harris Sr., a resident of South Carolina, have filed a class action law suit against the nation’s three large credit reporting agencies; Experian, Trans Union and Equifax. Harris is claiming that these three companies are violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which requires them to establish reasonable business procedures to insure that the credit reports that they provide are accurate. Harris’s suit says that because the CRAs allow creditors to omit the credit limit on consumer accounts, they are artificially holding down consumer credit scores, bilking American’s out of billions of dollars each year in the form of higher interest rates.

Five Arrested in 2005 Lexis Nexis Data Breach

GuardMyCreditFile has this story.

Federal authorities announced today that they have arrested five people in connection with the data breach at Lexis Nexis, a data wharehousing company, last year. The breach which exposed more than 300,000 people was the largest known data breach of its kind when it occurred, in early 2005.

Based on statements that some of them have made, none of the data they gained access to was used for purposes of identity theft. Instead, the motive appears to have been to carry out various pranks, many of which were focused on Hollywood celebrities. One of the accused told reporters that he had been involved in the theft of celebrity data but he denied that identity theft was ever a goal. In what can only be called an ironic twist to the story, Mann asked, "Besides, don't you think it's wrong that a company like that has all this information that's available to anyone who's willing to pay for it?"

VA's chief information security officer resigns

GovExec.com tells us that the CISO for the VA says he wasn’t able to do his job and implement security.

The chief information security officer for the Veterans Affairs Department, who resigned Thursday and was subsequently placed on paid administrative leave for his final two weeks of employment, said Friday that he had been prevented from fixing the department's information security weaknesses.

CISO Pedro Cadenas, in an interview with Government Executive, said that the department's recently crafted IT policy changes placed the responsibility for fixing years of neglect directly on his shoulders.

VA suffers another data breach

Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is reporting that this time a computer tape was lost at an Indiana Veterans Affairs office—back in May. And it was revealed that back in 2005 the VA suffered a loss of veterans information, as well.

A computer tape with information about more than 12,000 veterans – including Hoosiers -- was lost from a locked office in the Indianapolis Veterans Administration office on May 5, Congress was told Thursday. The missing tape included confidential material about veterans’ legal cases, the VA’s top lawyer told the Veterans Affairs Committee.

At the hearing on Thursday, Nicholson also told Buyer that information about 66 veterans was lost in 2005 in Minneapolis when a rental car was stolen. Papers with the veterans’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other information was in the trunk of the car that had been rented by an auditor who was examining the financial records of the agency, he said.

VA worker had approval for data

In a case that keeps growing, the Veterans Affairs worker whose laptop was stolen had written, documented approval to have the sensitive data on 26.5 million veterans. (Hope Yen at AP via WaPo)

$160m for vets to come from food stamps, farmers, students

The Office of Management and Budget has requested $160.5 million for free credit monitoring for veterans. One of the first things I wondered was “where does the money come from?” Well, now I know. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is requesting $160.5 million to pay for credit monitoring for vets.

The $160.5 million would come from “offsets”, $29 million of which would come from within Veterans Affairs (VA). The balance would be pulled from:  

• $20 million from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Stamp Employment and Training Program
• $40 million from USDA’s Trade Adjustment Assistance for Farmers program
• $6.7 million from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Professions Student Loans program
• $49.1 million from the Department of Labor’s Responsible Reintegration of Youthful Offenders program
• $9 million from the Department of Transportation’s Next Generation High Speed Rail program
• $1.4 million from the Bureau of Public Debt
• $5.3 million from the IRS

 The OMB’s letter is located at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/amendments/supplemental_6_28_06.pdf. 

 

Stolen VA Laptop Found

Associated Press is reporting (via Forbes.com)

The government has recovered the stolen laptop computer and hard drive containing sensitive data for up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Thursday.

Nicholson said law enforcement officials were still investigating to determine whether data from the equipment, which included names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, had been duplicated or utilized in any way.

So far, he said there have been no reports of identity theft stemming from the May 3 burglary at a VA employee's Maryland home.

Update: In a report in Bloomberg.com the FBI seems to claim that the data wasn’t accessed by the burglars.

`We can be relatively certain'' that the data ``was not compromised,'' said William Chase, head of the bureau's office in Baltimore, where the computer was recovered.

Chase and Chief Dwight Pettiford of the U.S. Park Police said a tip from an informant, alerted by posters and the promise of a $50,000 reward, led to the computer and hard drive being turned over to the FBI.

Update 2: Vets groups still want the free credit monitoring.

Data breach at San Francisco State Univ.

SF Chronicle has a story.

San Francisco State University officials have put students and staff on alert because a thief broke into a faculty member's car earlier this month and stole a laptop with nearly 3,000 Social Security numbers and names of former and current students.

Data breach at USDA effects 26,000 federal employees

Jim at GuardMyCreditFile has this report.

…the USDA was forced to announce last week that as many as 26,000 employees and contractors may have had their data accessed and stolen by hackers. The announcement is just another in a string of recent data breach embarrassments involving government databases.

This particular incident was discovered by IT workers at the Department of Agriculture on June 5th. The data contained in the database included names, Social Security Numbers, photographs and worksite information for roughly 26,000 people. All of the people exposed in the breach were either employees or private contractors to the Department in the Washington, DC area.

VA Asking for More Money After Data Theft

Hope Yen of the AP continues her tireless reporting of this issue. The Department of Veterans Affairs is asking the President for emergency funds to cover the costs for dealing with this data breach, including credit monitoring. The VA asked the federal judge who barred the VA from publicizing its free credit monitoring offer to revise his order.

[VA Secretary] Nicholson…was asking for at least $160.5 million in emergency funds for credit monitoring and other measures to protect veterans and military troops whose sensitive personal information was stolen from a VA employee's laptop computer. Nicholson acknowledged that much more money may be needed to revamp information security at the VA and other agencies. Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $160 million in emergency funds to pay for credit monitoring.