Data theft may expose jobless residents
The personal financial information of up to 210,000 unemployed Massachusetts residents may have been stolen in a data breach caused by a virus discovered in state labor department computers four weeks ago, officials said yesterday.
Names, addresses, and Social Security numbers, among other data, may have been taken, said John Glennon, chief information officer for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.
It raises a few questions: Why did it take the Department of Labor FOUR WEEKS to report this? I would imagine that anyone that had their information stolen has already found out about it - because their identities are now trashed. How did the virus get into the database? Is it a case of incompetent employees opening files they shouldn't? Holes in security that should have been patched?
What got me was this little bit of chutzpah, though:
Joanne Goldstein, the secretary of labor and workforce development, said that possible victims of the breach should act immediately to protect themselves by putting a credit freeze or a security alert on their credit reports.
Right. I mean, it would really be bad if someone who had their identity stolen waited FOUR WHOLE WEEKS to report it, right? Gah. The hubris is astounding. "Yeah, we sat on this news for a month, hoping it would magically resolve itself, but don't you delay!" One ponders what the MA Department of Labor would do to a business that was subject to such an attack and waited a month before telling its customers...
MA: We'll tell you about serious security breaches... when we feel like it.
That is all.
4 comments:
All this on top of the fact that unemployed people are likely to be relying on their credit to live on and having credit reports run as part of the hiring process.
and yet if you have your guns stolen and wait four weeks to report it.....MA charges you with a crime.
What are you complaining about? It's not like any EMPLOYEE of the Dept. of Labor had their Identity Stolen, just a bunch of Peons. You act as if one of the Kennedys was being charged with some Bogus Crime rigged by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!
You know, every time I think about how badly the Politicians have screwed things up in Ohio, I just think of Jay living in Massachusetts, and I say, "Gee, at least I don't live in Beantown!"
MA: We'll tell you about serious security breaches... when we feel like it.
Just don't let us catch you with a spent .22 casing in your boot tread and no FOID card. You'll do hard time.
Got to have priorities, right?
Post a Comment