J.C. Penney Customers Among 650,000 Hit In Missing Computer Tape Incident
Written by Evan SchumanCredit card data and Social Security numbers on about 650,000 customers of J.C. Penney and as many as 100 other retailers were exposed when data storage vendor Iron Mountain lost a computer disk, the Associated Press has reported.
The disk, which was apparently discovered missing in October, was placed in Iron Mountain’s custody by GE Money, which handles credit card data for J.C. Penney and as many as 100 other retailers, the AP report said.
The best quote comes from Iron Mountain spokesperson Dan O’Neill, who said the company regretted losing the tape, "but because of the volume of information we handle and the fact people are involved, we have occasionally made mistakes."
GE Money, which is paying for 12 months of credit-monitoring service for customers whose Social Security numbers were on the tape, is quoted as saying that it took them two months to reconstruct the missing tape and identify the people whose information was lost.
-Marc
January 18th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Evan:
Seems to me that at this rate…there’s a great growth stock potential here: simply buy into all the companies that do credit reporting.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:06 pm
It is often irrational to treat the mere loss of a tape as a legally-meaningful breach of security.