Vets’ Records Stolen
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in War
As if they needed more to worry about, now Vets have to deal with some idiots stealing all of their personal information?
WASHINGTON – Thieves took sensitive personal information on 26.5 million U.S. veterans, including
Social Security numbers and birth dates, after a Veterans Affairs employee improperly brought the material home, the government said Monday.The information involved mainly those veterans who served and have been discharged since 1975, said VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. Data of veterans discharged before 1975 who submitted claims to the agency may have been included.
Nicholson said there was no evidence the thieves had used the data for identity theft, and an investigation was continuing.
“It’s highly probable that they do not know what they have,” he said in a briefing with reporters. “We have decided that we must exercise an abundance of caution and make sure our veterans are aware of this incident.”
My thoughts go out to the men and women who’ve helped defend our country. This sucks and I hope it’s resolved soon.
UPDATE:
More from MSNBC.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 22nd, 2006 and is filed under War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 23rd, 2006 at 2:14 pm
I am not allowed to take home sensitive information from my workplace, mainly because it is classified Secret. This isn’t the first itme, however, that sensitive information has been stolen from a civilian employee who has taken a laptop home to work on a project.
Hey, jack holes, if you have social security numbers, addresses, birth dates, or anything else that could possibly be used to screw someone’s life up- LEAVE IT AT WORK.
May 23rd, 2006 at 5:53 pm
A couple more cases on this scale and the credit agencies will have to find some way OTHER THAN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS to keep track of who is who. Since, last time I checked, Federal law prohibits using SSNs for any purpose unrelated to taxes (even by the Federal government), I’m not feeling a whole lot of sympathy.
Alternatively, the federal government could try actually enforcing the law. Maybe on itself, just to start slowly. Suddenly there would be a whole lot fewer potential sources of this information. Hmmm.
May 24th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Everybody can get one free copy of their credit report from each of the 3 credit reporting companies every year. So effectively, everybody (not just veterans) can check their credit report for free every 4 months for ever and ever by rotating through the freebies.
It’s a good habit to get into in this day and age, apparently, vet or not.
May 25th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
The VA now needs to accept responsibility for its blunder, and track any credit report requests for all affected veterans. Any request for a credit report should be flagged and the vet should be immediately notified. Request you representatives to tell the VA to do this, please.
March 13th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
You can get your own records back by visiting:
http://www.gov-records-review.info
My brother had to get his records cleaned up after his tour and this is one of the three sites he used. I hope it works out for you dude.