It was an ‘inside job’. Over two million financial record have been breached:

“JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Fidelity National Information Services, a financial processing company, said Tuesday a worker at one of its subsidiaries stole 2.3 million consumer records containing credit card, bank account and other personal information.

The employee sold the information to an unidentified data broker who sold it to several direct marketing companies, but the data were not used in identity theft or other fraudulent financial activity, Fidelity said in a statement.”

link: 2.3 million consumer financial records stolen

The reports states that identity theft is not a concern. How could they possibly know that? These data have been sold and resold. People have profited repeatedly from sales of these files. Can the authorities be absolutely certain that this information is not in criminal hands? It certainly would be in Fidelity National’s best interest not to have to pay for credit monitoring for over two million people.

How can the consumer protect oneself from this type of data breach? It seems that the best recourse is to assume that your personal data are out there - in the wild - and to place fraud alerts on your credit report.

Catherine Forsythe

[tags]data breach, privacy, security, identity theft, fidelity national, fraud alert, credit report[/tags]