Forget the NSA. Here's another very scary list. Are you included?

[Robbien]

Every time a massive data theft or breaches happens, I keep kicking myself for not starting up that list of all such compromises that I promised myself I would start (and maintain here on ZDNet). The last one of these, which I think is also the largest, involved 26.5 million records containing the personal information of U.S. veterans. I don't think most people realize how bad the situation is which is why I thought a list would have more impact. The problem is compounded in some cases by the failure to report the theft or breach on a timely basis. In the case of the U.S. veteran data, the Veterans Administration (VA) didn't report the data for nearly three weeks.

. . .

What does any of this have to do with my headline. Well, I'm not going to bother making that list. That's because the Privacy Rights Clearing House already has one that lists the breaches that have been reported. http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm

There's no telling what ones haven't been reported. But I'll venture a guess that the list of unreported incidents far outnumbers the list of reported ones. Based on the size and frequency of these breaches (as well as brand names involved — brand names we assumed we could trust), theft of your identity doesn't appear to be an "if" question. If it hasn't happened already, it's just a question of when. A very sad state of the state if you ask me.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=3102

[Drum]

1. Damn, what a huge list

in a relatively brief time-span. Scary! Lots of universities and colleges on there...hmmm.

And we should trust electronic balloting???

[Robbien]

6. Curious. Ohio institutions are on the list a great number of times

Anyone who voted, was insured, was on government benefits, went to HS or College, and/or paid RE taxes had their info stolen.

California is on there frequently also.

Almost a hundred million records in total. That's a shocker.

[katty]

2. thanks for these links!

[bluefish]

3. Thank you for posting this

This is really bigger than the media is currently portraying.

[UpInArms]

4. 81,822,769

and those are just the known personal information "releases".

Sheesh!

[NYC]

5. I consider this a very serious risk.

Thanks for posting the link.

http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm

An interesting one:

April 28,
2006 Ohio's Secretary of State
(Cleveland, OH)

The names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of potentially millions of registered voters in Ohio were included on CD-ROMs distributed to 20 political campaign operations for spring primary election races. The records of about 7.7 million registered voters are listed on the CDs, but it's unknown how many records contained SSNs, which were not supposed to have been included on the CDs.

"Potentially millions of registered voters"