Another backup tape lost in shipping

Bank tape lost with data on 90,000 customers. The lulls between these things are never long enough. Pretty routine story as far as these go, but there's a good quote. "In addition, the tape can't be read without a mainframe and software, according to the bank." Guess they've never heard of regular expressions or used "strings".

And now we can't even trust credit card processors. Looks like MasterCard isn't too happy with the company, as they weren't in compliance with their guidelines. Oh, and I probably won't bother to post a more complete list of what I did a while back. Although that list was only about half the size of what it should have been...

ChoicePoint, Bank of America/Chase, PayMaxx, LexisNexis, UC Berkeley, Boston College, Nevada DMV, Northwestern University, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, UC Chico, UC San Francisco, Georgia DMV, MCI, University of Mississippi, San Jose Medical Group, Tufts University, LexisNexis (last one found bigger), Ralph Lauren/Polo, FasTrack (sorry, no link), California Health Services (PDF Link), DSW, Ameritrade, CMU, Michigan State Wharton Center, Christus St. Joseph Hospital, Georgia Southern University, BoA (Chase), Wachovia, Commerce Bancorp and PNC, Oklahoma State University (gotta say they seem to be helping people the best so far), Time Warner, Colorado Department of Public Health, Purdue University (when will the big companies learn from the Universities how to do this right?), US DOJ, Stanford University, Hinsdale High School, Westborough Bank, Jackson Community College, Valdosta State University (making this somewhat funny, and sad because by news coverage it looks like they're trying to ignore it happened), Merlin Information Systems, and now Citigroup (note, they helped some previous ones notify customers, so they should be good at it by now).

So where is your personal data tonight?

Wow. Glad I don't use T-Mobile.

• Apparently MN is a geeky state. 57.5% of rural MN uses the net and 27% has broadband.
• If if you can't manage to figure out an excuse on your own, I think you'd be too confused by the message to use the escape-a-date message.
• And in another PR move, they want to ban spam on phones. Too bad most spam doesn't come from the US...
• XP SP2. "The idea is that if users have to actively give permission for programs to interact with their computers, there is less chance they will be hit by a virus or inadvertently allow malicious software that can monitor computer activities." Um, what? Given that half the recent onces have involved saving and opening a password protected zip file after disabling the virus scanner which is stopping them, I doubt clicking OK will do much good. Hopefully it'll prevent some of the further effects though.
• Again with the thing, MS is pushing automatic updates. And they provide phone support for people, not listed but likely 866-PC-SAFETY like before. And remember that's 866, as most users who need it would probably follow the instructions at 800-. The combination may be a good way to help get some computer problems away though.
• Look at the third paragraph here. And then never complain when someone outside Microsoft adds the $ in place of the s. Also that link could be handy. People put undue trust in big companies - use it to your advantage. They also have one on spyware.
• And not again... One person who was notified works in an unrelated area on the campus and is aware of the applicable laws (the ones cited in the letter) - which only require disclosure if the data is not encrypted. Oops.

OK, enough for now...