I strongly encourage all veterans to visit the announcement page issued by the Veteran’s Administration that explains how a VA data analyst lost 26.5 million veteran records to a common thief. What the article does not explain is why the data was not encrypted. Today, it's common practice to ensure that data is encrypted on any system that can be stolen (a laptop or an external or removable drive).
As identity theft is one of the fastest growing criminal industries, I also encourage veterans to freeze any banking and credit accounts that can be compromised by someone obtaining this information. By federal law everyone is entitled to free annual credit checks (more often in some states) and the ability to freeze our accounts at no cost in cases such as this. That’s the upside—we now have a legitimate excuse to freeze our accounts. See the aforementioned announcement for details.
According to the article "It is possible that they remain unaware of the information which they possess or of how to make use of it. " This is laughable. Do not assume that this situation is too obscure for the thief to understand the importance of the data. The VA and press have made it perfectly clear that they have stolen a very valuable hard drive--and they gave him (or her) a 3-week head start and put a $50,000 price on their head. That works out to about $.02 per record lost. I guess the VA only thinks that's what our security is worth.
