Exposed Credit Cards - Does anyone really know the facts?
This morning I read an article in the Roanoke Times. It mentions an AP story saying that, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, 79 million records containing Social Security or credit card numbers were compromised, a four-fold increase over 2006.
OK, I’ll buy into that. It was, after all, a record year thanks to the announcement of the TJX data breach. What I’m having trouble with is the number of 79 million records. The initial press releases put the TJX breach at 45.7 million debit and credit cards, but when all the law suits were filed, the number in the court documents was listed at almost twice that - 90 million. That’s well over the 79 million reported by the Identity Theft Resource Center and it’s just card accounts.
It’s a bit early for 2007 numbers, but according to Privacy Rights dot org there were over 100 million potentially compromised records in 2006 - Identity Theft Resource Center is reporting 79/4 or 19.75 million.
There is certainly more than a little disparity here. Part of it could be the “potentially compromised” wording that Privacy Rights uses, but from where I stand, if there’s a potential of compromise then there IS a compromise.
UPDATE JANUARY 9:
I poked around a bit. It’s amazing how the numbers are spread, depending on where you look. According to
this site just adding up the worst 5 incidents of the year comes to 142.4 million. And guess what - those five were listed in the worst ten since 2000.
And yet, if you ask the credit card companies, they’ll probably tell you that credit card fraud losses are reduced.
