Feel left out?
Do you feel left out because you didn’t lose your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to the Chinese with the VA, the DoD or the OPM data breach? Well, here’s your chance – the IRS admits that it lost the PII of over six hundred thousand tax payers. From the Washington Post;
The IRS reported in May that the cybercriminals had used stolen Social Security numbers and information they got elsewhere to try to gain access to old tax return information for about 225,000 households. That included about 114,000 successful attempts and 111,000 unsuccessful ones.
On Monday, the agency said an “extensive review” of the 2015 filing season uncovered a far wider breach — an additional 390,000 affected taxpayers, including about 220,000 additional households “where there were instances of possible or potential access” to prior-year return data, the IRS said in a statement. The new numbers also include about 170,000 additional “suspected attempts that failed to clear the authentication processes,” meaning the hackers failed to clear a security screen that required them to know more information about the taxpayer.
The breach seems to have occurred in February, so what’s today? August? The IRS is offering free credit monitoring to those whose information was lost. I’m saying that you should always have credit monitoring. Better yet, we should do away with PII. The purpose of the Social Security number has gotten way out of control. Maybe we should have microchips planted in our heads or bar codes on our necks.
Category: Politics
I still have the VA letter telling me that my PII might have been compromised. I’ll wait for one from the IRS. I should frame them, shouldn’t I?
“I should frame them, shouldn’t I?”
Who? The letters? Or the agencies? I prefer the agencies.
Aw, come on! Post a spew alert!
That is a loaded question.
Well, just wait for it, you won’t have a long wait for the “mark of the beast” in your hand or on your forehead!
Let’s see, Target, Anthem, VA, Social Security, my ex-wife, I think everybody has my info now.
Except for The Dutch Rudder Gang, I wonder just who DOESN’T have my info these days?
” The IRS is offering free credit monitoring to those whose information was lost.”
Yeah, no thanks. I’ll pass on that, you bunch of incompetent ass wipes.
I truly think that IRS is about as competent, credible and reputable as the Dutch Rudder Gang.
But, if they get more money, they’ll be more better. They said so. The IRS, that is. Not the DRG.
Barak the Won said so, too. Just ask him, not only is there not a smidgen of corruption at the IRS, they’re woefully underfunded.
Is it possible that the credit monitoring companies are paying these people to hack accounts, with no desire to do anything with the info ?
You could possibly be right.
I’ve been out of the loop for about a decade however back in my day many “Internet security” organizations hired crackers to find vulnerabilities in commonly used software (sendmail, apache, etc.) which they would then develop a fix for which was then sold to their clients prior to being released to the public.
The game, as far as cracking (hacking) goes has since grown much larger. While we will probably never know the truth, hacking the IRS, for example, is serious business that can and currently is generating a rather impressive amount of cashflow for some.
We are our own worst enemies when it comes to personal information. Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, etc. are just gateways to sharing all your data. I recently made the mistake of adding the LinkedIn app to my tablet and either checked or didn’t uncheck a box. Later that day everyone I had ever emailed or received an email from recieved an invitation to connect – NOT just from my contacts. Cyber Security is a moving target and in this day and age, quickly becoming a myth. Once the floodgates are open, the water can be taken by anyone downstream. During the early days when we were working on the first intranets I had coworker make the comment, “avoid gratuitous use of technology”. In retrospect he was spot-on.
I think the key word here is cybersecurity.
I do not, never have and never will file my taxes electronically, for the very reason in the article. I send them paper copies by registered mail, return receipt required, which I’m quite sure annoys them to pieces, and I DO NOT CARE IF IT DOES.
Barn door.
Horse.
Etc., etc.
Never received a letter saying my PII was compromised, but I just had two random charges appear on my bank statements from a company with a Chinese web address.
Same here, but I did find out one time, that I’d made in-store purchases about two time zones, and 1900 miles away, from where I was at the time that the purchases were made. Strange, that.
Sounds like the time I ended up purchasing gasoline and some other stuff in CA while I was on vacation in MI!
Yeah, I was in Michigan when I made those purchases in Tuscon.
If it hadn’t been for an alert employee at the credit card company, I’d have had to go through with disputing the claim and all the BS that goes with that.
My wife or I (we’re not sure which) bought several hundred dollars worth of stuff in person at Frederick’s of Hollywood in a mall in Ohio once. We have never been to Ohio. What happened was my wife used our debit card in MD and the clerk memorized or was able to jot down the card number and name. The bank fraud unit called that evening. That’s how we learned of the Ohio purchases. The bank put the money back in our account after a brief interview.
I opened up a fortune cookie at a local Chinese restaurant last evening. Talk about amazing coincidences. My “lucky number” fortune was identical to my social security number. Bahdahbing!
In regard to cybersecurity, I seldom make really big purchases. That is something I would plan for ahead of doing it. If, however, I need something like a new stove, I will shop the ads, look online. And if I find a place that has some bennies plus a good price, I’ll call the card-issuing company ahead of making the purchase, and TELL them what I’m going to do, and that it’s me, not someone else, so that when it shows up on my account, they’ve already noted it there. I’ve done that many, many times, and they are perfectly willing to note that on my account.
Not saying you have to check your accounts daily or get paranoid, but you should know when something odd shows up and tell your bank before it goes through.
I don’t see the problem. If the IRS has that information, who else could have it that would be any more of a problem for you than the IRS?
/sarc, but just barely