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TJX, the company that is known for having the largest data breach in history (so far), has not implemented better security and might have gotten worse. The employee that blew the whistle on them has been caught and fired for it.

TJX now has a firm that scours the internet to find bad things posted about them, which is how they found the message and fired him for it. Too bad they don't appear to have hired anyone to beef up operational security or to convince people to use strong passwords.

Hey! That probably means they'll find THIS page. Sweet.

If that's the case, then here's my message to them: Stop storing all that personal data about us against our will and you won't have to pay for more security. You can't lose what you don't have, duh!

Bad play Lending Tree. Bad play.

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Apparently a Lending Tree employee gave internal passwords to external lenders without permission. This resulted in people being offered loans by lenders who shouldn't have been able to see their data. While Lending Tree doesn't believe that this particular activity is likely to lead to ID theft, it is a problem nonetheless.

I wasn't going to cover this story because it's so typical of what's happening recently, but this stuck in my craw. In a letter shared with the Consumerist by a reader, Lending Tree is recommending that people get fraud alerts on their accounts as a precaution.

Fraud alerts are practically worthless! Don't even bother. Get a freeze and you'll actually be protected.

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There have been almost 40 data breaches in Maryland since January which have been reported only due to a new breach notification law in Maryland.

I'm betting the story would be similar for other states if they had similar laws.

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Another breach. Who'd have guessed?

The company is aware of about 1,800 cases of fraud reported so far relating to the breach.