More than 25 million British citizens were exposed to potential identity theft in that very likely can be one the largest single data breaches ever.
Two CDs including names, addresses, bank account information and national insurance numbers (like our Social Security numbers here in the United States) were misled by a government employee. Although no immediate cases of identity theft were reported, this information is obviously very sensitive and could cause major problems if it falls into the wrong hands.
The Gartner Group estimates that it could cost more than $ 500 million to banks in the United Kingdom to take the necessary precautions (such as closing the affected accounts) to prevent further theft threats of identity. According to Gartner analyst Avivah Litan, these precautions are important because of the sensitivity of the information that has been lost:
"The type of data lost could be extremely valuable to identity thieves and other criminals, which could, for example, the use of stolen account numbers to take on bank accounts. This is why bank account numbers usually sell on the black market in the US for as much as $ 400, compared to $ 5 or less for credit card numbers. "??
Could a given breach of this magnitude occurs here in the US? In a word: Yes! Hundreds of thousands of US citizens vulnerable to identity theft each year because of these types of data breaches are usually the result of not following the protocols prescribed for the treatment of sensitive data.
TrustedID, one of the providers listed in our identity theft prevention service comparator in depth monitoring of these types of violations monitored by their breach of security alerts. We encourage you to check out their blog.
We firmly believe that the best preventive measure that any consumer can do is to subscribe to a protection service against identity theft. We have reviewed all major suppliers and compared them head to head as a resource for our readers.