Another 40M Americans credit compromised
There’s been another ‘breach’ of security and the credit cards of almost 40 million citizens have been compromised. This time, instead of losing the data being sent from one location to another, security at the collection point has been breached.
First of all, according to news reports from CNN and others, the vendor, a company handling transaction processing for Visa and MasterCard, was storing cardholder information after transactions and claimed it was being used for “research purposes”. Visa and MasterCard purportedly have rules prohibiting card processors from saving cardholder information after the transactions, but do they actually take measures to ensure their rules are followed?
If you experience a violation of your personal medical history, HIPAA regulations can award you between $100 to a maximum of $25,000 per standard voilated. The results, our medical history is carefully safeguarded by those who handle it. Why? The penalties are steep! If these fines were applied to credit violations, the minimum payment for this incident would be $4 billion.
Are there any penalties for compromising our credit/personal data? I haven’t found anything of consequence in my research so far. So when does this problem get addressed? After we’ve all got impeached credit reports?
Americans need to realize there are too many companies out there making money brokering our personal data. The credit bureaus allow access to our data. Companies we choose to do business with allow access to our data. They make money doing so.
As long as we fail to take action, our personal security and privacy will continue to be violated. It’s time to get Congress’s attention and demand action preventing these ‘breaches’ and accesses to what should be protected and private.
The goal must be to incentivize our creditors and credit bureaus to protect our data. Until they are held accountable for their failure to do so and suffer consequences for that failure, we are vulnerable, both personally and as a nation. Fines, penalities and stringent regulations must be imposed before these companies will take responsibility for protecting our information.
Write, fax or email your Congressional representatives and demand they take action to protect our data. The following link will give you contact information for your represenatives in both the House and Senate by state: 2005 Congressional Contact center.
Send me an email if you would like a draft letter that you can use when contacting your representative.