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Insurance Company Fails to Ensure Personal Information

August 4, 2008 – 1:48 pm

Another massive data breach was recently discovered at a Texas insurance company. A man was found taking photos of the trash in the dumpster of the Texas Insurance Claims Services building. When police were called in to investigate the incident, they discovered hundreds of files containing social security numbers, phone numbers, maiden names, addresses and insurance claim numbers. This information would serve as easy access into the wallets of each of these customers.

When reporters questioned the Texas Insurance Claims Services company, they were told that the company legally only has to hold onto this information for five years. After this time, they may dispose of the information. Their company commonly disposes of the sensitive information by simply throwing it into the dumpster, and it rarely shreds its documents. Because of the negative press related to the recent data breach, the company says it is now rethinking its policies concerning this kind of material.

With many companies today, the safety and security of our personal information just isn’t high on their priorities list. Companies tend to focus their efforts and energy into ventures to make money, and seldom go out of their way to properly protect and dispose of information that could lead to identity theft. Without companies protecting our identities, we are left with few options. Rather than being able to rest assured that our information is safe in the hands of the corporations we do business with, we have to assume our information is available to identity thieves. The best solution is to subscribe to a service like lifelock to protect your identity even when your information does get into the hands of criminals.

Tags: Data Breach, identity theft protection, Life Lock, LifeLock