(Image is in the Public Domain)

There's just nothing more I can say about this so I'll stick with pointing you to the news articles and just shut up.

Darn those hackers... so clever.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

This is so, so stupid. It's not weak security, its that you data-abused us for all our customer data that we didn't want you to keep anyway. If you hadn't stored all the data on us, you couldn't have lost it.

In addition to pilfering over 45 million—and possibly as many as 200 million—credit card and debit card numbers, the hackers were also able to obtain other personal data from over 450,000 customers. This included driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers.

I already know they don't need to store our credit cards, but licenses and SSNs?

Federal Trade Commission

(Image is in the Public Domain)

On April 23rd, the ID Theft Task Force that's chaired by Alberto Gonzales (the US Attorney General) and co chaired by Deborah Platt Majores (the chairwoman of the FTC) has released their final recommendations for reducing identity theft.

Here are a few of their better recommendations:

Where's the Freeze recommendation?

For residents of states in which state law authorizes a credit freeze, consider placing a credit freeze on their credit file.7 This option is most useful when the breach includes information that can be used to open a new account, such as SSNs. A credit freeze cuts off third party access to a consumer’s credit report, thereby effectively preventing the issuance of new credit in the consumer’s name.

Among the state-enacted remedies without a federal counterpart is one granting consumers the right to obtain a credit freeze. Credit freezes make a consumer’s credit report inaccessible when, for example, an identity thief attempts to open an account in the victim’s name. State laws differ in several respects, including whether all consumers can obtain a freeze or only identity theft victims; whether credit reporting agencies can charge the consumer for unfreezing a file (which would be necessary when applying for credit); and the time allowed to the credit reporting agencies to unfreeze a file. These provisions are relatively new, and there is no "track record" to show how effective they are, what costs they may impose on consumers and businesses, and what features are most beneficial to consumers. An assessment of how these measures have been implemented and how effective they have been would help policy makers in considering whether a federal credit freeze law would be appropriate. Accordingly, the Task Force recommends that the FTC, with support from the Task Force member agencies, assess the impact and effectiveness of credit freeze laws, and report on the results in the first quarter of 2008.

This is very weak and isn't even a recommendation of it's own, just a sub-component of "Assess Efficacy of Tools Available to Victims". So it went from the nice, solid (and correctly worded) "effectively preventing the issuance of new credit in the consumer’s name" to "there is no 'track record' to show how effective they are, what costs they may impose on consumers and businesses, and what features are most beneficial to consumers". Alberto Gonzales and Deborah Platt Majores should be ashamed of themselves for putting their names on this worthless report.

Update 9/27/2007

It looks like the credit reporting companies are starting to read the bones and pre-emptively offer credit freezes before they get legislated into having to provide it on worse terms and lower fees. Two out of three have jumped onto the bandwagon with only one holding out so far.