GE Money: Information on 650,000 Card Holders Lost
In a blunder that qualifies for the “Oops!” of the week, GE Money announced that the personal information of 650,000 card holders can’t be found. This includes over 150,000 social security numbers. The information was stored on a tape and left in the care of data storage company Iron Mountain Inc. There are no records to indicate that anyone checked out the tape; it just can’t be found.
A spokesman for GE Money said that credit card holders of Penney and up to one hundred other major retailers could be affected. It took two months to reconstruct the tape and discover the names of all customers involved. GE Money has been sending out warning letters since December, but some card holders have complained that the letters looked too much like credit card offers, and were thrown away. Regardless, GE Money has agreed to foot the bill for twelve months of credit monitoring for customers whose social security numbers were stolen.
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, 125 million customer records were compromised last year in the U.S. This was a six-fold increase from 2006. Hopefully GE Money’s tape will be found safe and secure, and its contents won’t add to this already staggering statistic.
