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.

So today I'm looking through email and see an email from one of the loan companies with something about a 1098-E (1098 is interest you paid for those who don't pay attention to taxes). Didn't think much of it other than I'll reference it in a couple weeks. Then I figured, wait a second, that address doesn't look quite right. I figured can't be, nobody would be that stupid. Yep, they outsourced and had the company send out the email directly. And yep, follow that link and the first thing they ask for is SSN and to answer a CAPCHA. I'm pretty certain it's legit based on the fact it went to a unique address for them, but as a matter of principal... I wonder if they link to them on their web site. If not I think I may have to call them and ask for a real one and if they refer to the email only say I got one that looks like a fraud. I seriously hope nobody actually uses that link, but unfortunately most people probably do. :(