Bank of America ‘loses’ vital data
p2pnet.net News:- The Bank of America appears to have mislaid 1.2 million backup tapes detailing the financial information of government employees – and some US senate members.
“The lost data include Social Security numbers and account information that could make customers of a federal government charge-card program vulnerable to identity theft,” says the Washington Post.
“The tapes contained information on the customers and accounts of the U.S. government’s SmartPay charge card program, which has more than 2.1 million members and annual transactions totaling more than $21 billion, according to the General Services Administration. Reports have pegged the number of cards affected at 1.2 million.”
BusinessWeek says senator Pat Leahy is among those affected. He’s been a, “leader of calls this week for a Senate Judiciary Committee inquiry into whether more regulation of companies that buy and sell personal data is needed,” says the report which also quotes Barbara Desoer, in charge of technology, service and fulfillment for the bank, as saying, “The privacy of customer information receives the highest priority at Bank of America, and we take our responsibilities for safeguarding it very seriously.”
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February 26th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
so… can anyone “find” this financial data on these senators who passed bills like the infamous pirate act and post them to servers in china or something =-)
February 27th, 2005 at 1:59 am
“mislaid 1.2 million backup tapes”
When you lose your car keys they are mislaid.
When you “lose” *1.2 million* tapes it is deliberate.
And if you lost 1.2 million tapes, you shouldn’t expect to recover them.
February 27th, 2005 at 4:54 am
quotes Barbara Desoer, in charge of technology, service and fulfillment for the bank, as saying, “The privacy of customer information receives the highest priority at Bank of America, and we take our responsibilities for safeguarding it very seriously.”
YEA RIGHT!!!!!!
February 27th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
If what they did was “safegaurd it seriously,” I’d really hate to see what would happen if the got careless!
February 28th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
I’d like to see how much mooley was given by BofA to political campaigns….
Can you say “Favor”?
March 17th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
NOTE: I’m still waiting on my password and login confirmation, folks, so layoff on the anonymous coward stuff if you don’t mind.
Readers should be aware of the fact that Bank of America’s (BOA)incompetent handling of their confidential information could cause them to be billed by BOA for any loses involving the fraudulent usage of credit cards issued by BOA even if the cardholder has notified the bank that the charges are not theirs.
My BOA issued Visa credit card was used without my permission. I notified the bank in a very swift and timely manner and have proved to the bank that the charges are fraudulent. I have filed felony theft charges with the Houston, Texas Police Department’s Financial Crimes Division against the perpetrator, yet BOA still insists that I must pay these bogus charges.
Additionally, BOA will NOT furnish my attorney with a contact name in their legal department so as to initiate a line of communication in the attempt to resolve this.
The reason BOA is siding with the thieves and not me is that they can extort me by the threat of ruining my credit.
BOA has been going steadily down hill for some time now. A Florida man is sueing them for allowing his account at the bank to be emptied by hackers. The bank refuses to repay him for their lax security in allowing this to happen, just as it has now happened to over a million other BOA customers (Scroll down to the bottom to see cut and paste links for the articles that this information comes from).
Another instance of extremely poor judgment on the part of BOA is that they grossly over paid for their purchase of Fleet bank by many millions (scroll down…)
As they say on TV “but wait, there’s more”. The BOA is close to reaching a settlement with the SEC about settling allegations that several employees traded stocks with advance knowledge of research reports by the bank’s analysts (see below for these and others…)
Hacking into / Stealing a BOA customers money Cut & Paste link:
http://www.crime-research.org/news/02.28.2005/995/
BOA settles Worldcom lawsuit Cut & Paste link:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3067535
SEC Investigation Cut & Paste link:
http://www.thestreet.com/_tscfoc/markets/matthewgoldstein/10211317.html
Caveat Emptor, people.