When it comes to identity theft, there were a couple of incidents that really hit mainstream media pretty hard.  The first (and probably most obvious) was the compromising of TJ Maxx (and its subsidiaries’) processing systems, which led to millions upon millions of people’s identities being stolen.  Then there was the incident in the UK where a tax agency lost two CDs in the mail, which had sensitive information of over 25 million people on them.  Seeing how 2007 really brought light to how businesses protect their consumers’ information, will we learn from it in 2008?  Only time will tell….

A year ago, TJX announced that its processing systems had been compromised, leading to the theft of more than 94 million credit- and debit-card accounts. The theft brought the issue of privacy out of the civil-liberties ghetto and into mainstream political news, but TJX has managed to settle with consumers and banks, keeping its costs in dealing with the breach to less than $156 million.

In an equally stunning incident, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the United Kingdom’s tax agency had lost two CDs sent through the mail containing the personal details of 25 million people, resulting in the resignation of the agency’s chairman. Notably this occurred after the intended recipient had requested an anonymized version of the data from the agency, which HMRC ignored and sent along the complete records, including banking details, names and addresses anyway.[more]

Tags: Identity Theft