US Data Breach Victims Count Passes the 100 Million Mark

[mandy]

A stolen laptop at The Boeing Co. has pushed a widely watched tally of U.S. data breach victims past the 100 million mark.

On Tuesday, Boeing disclosed that files containing Social Security numbers, names and home addresses of 382,000 current and former employees were compromised in early December when an unencrypted laptop was stolen from an employee's car.

That disclosure pushed the total number of data breach victims on the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Web site to 100,152,801, said Beth Givens, director of the consumer advocacy group...

Givens believes that the actual number of names that have been compromised since ChoicePoint is probably much higher than her tally. "I think the number 100 million is largely a fictional number, but what it really indicates is that this is a very significant problem," she said...

full article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/arti...ticleBasic&articleId=9006140

[BellisimaJ.]

Why any of these large companies would allow significant amounts of data to leave their offices on a laptop, boggles my mind. It is utterly outrageous that this is tolerated at all.

[amy]

[quote author=BellisimaJ. link=topic=6353.msg37276#msg37276 date=1166446054]
Why any of these large companies and government agencies  would allow significant amounts of data to leave their offices on a laptop, boggles my mind. It is utterly outrageous that this is tolerated at all.
[/quote]