Thursday, March 25, 2004

GMAC Customers' Personal Data in Stolen Laptop

On Jan. 26, two laptop computers containing 200,000 customers' names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit scores, marital status, and gender were stolen from a locked vehicle at an Atlanta regional office. A division of GMAC Financial Services has been quietly informing its customers that they are vulnerable to identity theft. The stolen computers were password-protected but lacked encryption.

Great! I guess people don't have enough things to worry about. The incompetent morons responsible should lose their jobs over this incident. And somebody should explain why the problem has been hidden for the last two months. For the company to "quietly inform" its customers has to be considered less than aggressive corrective action. Looks to me like the company kept everything secret while hoping the problem would just go away. Dramatic and painful corrective measures are warranted to preclude any recurrence.

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