Oh, good. My identity has been compromised. Again.
A couple of weeks ago, I got notification from OU that someone had hacked the networks at the alumni association and Hudson Health Center, and had gained access to names and social security numbers for a bunch o’ Bobcats — specifically, about 200,000 former and current students. Both The Wife and I received letters indicating that our info was definitely on the list.
And then there is the Holy Mother of Potential Identity Thefts, announced yesterday by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Some idiot took home a hard drive with names, SSNs and birthdates of 26.5 million veterans, and the drive was stolen when his house was burglarized May 3. There’s no specific indication, yet, about whose info was in the drive. And actually, there’s no information about whether the burglar even has a sense of the damage he could do with the info he has.
I think I should be in pretty good shape, identitytheftwise. Right after I got OU’s notification, I filed a fraud alert with the credit reporting agencies, which makes it tough for anyone to open new accounts in my name without my written approval. That alert is in place for three months from the date I filed it, so I may have to extend it, depending on what I find out from the VA.
And I’m not too concerned about what would happen to me if someone tried to use my info to get ahold of a credit card or a loan — they’ll be in for an unpleasant surprise once they see just how little they can accomplish with my credit score.
So I think I’m reasonably well-covered. But, jesus, this is annoying. First it’s my school, which has bucketloads of money and should be able to afford to secure its servers. And then it’s the VA, which may or may not have solid network security — I’m finding that it’s security has been criticized in the past — but that doesn’t matter if SOMEONE IS TAKING THE DATA HOME. Fuck. I’m not trying to be a whiny veteran here, but this the agency that’s supposed to be taking care of us? There are a thousands, perhaps millions, of veterans in this country with real problems — medical, psychological, financial — and this is the last goddamn thing they need to be dealing with.
Uncle Crappy 
UC –
One of the school’s I attended also compromised my personal data – nothing came of it though. The irating part of this is that, even though through digitalization of our data, ID theft has increased by infinity, it is still the burden of the innocent to PROVE to a commercial business that they in fact did not purchase items / open a line of credit / decided to buy a nice used Pinto! What I would like to see is that, if one is notified of a potential breach of security – one could go to a, dare I say, federal deposit, register, and then be able to point to that as a high standard of proof that you’re not making this shit up and actually did not rent furniture from Aaron Rents in Birmingham, Alabama. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Now back to our regularly scheduled reality. . .
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I’m not expecting too many problems, personally. I check my bank accounts online at several times a week, and I’ve got the credit report thing lined up.
Not everyone is as thorough; actually, there are lots who just don’t know how to be as thorough. And a guy I talked with today for a story I did about this made another frightening point: The people who have the most dealings with the VA are those whose income is low enough that they qualify for VA benefits, and those folks can’t afford an identity theft hit of any kind.
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Some VA employee is nearly going to get a mildly worded letter of near reprimand! Maybe with a couple of days of paid suspension!
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