A month after a theft from a state intern’s car, more bad news follows from that data breach:

“The number of people affected by missing state data more than doubled with the announcement today that Social Security numbers and other information on 675,000 additional taxpayers, former state workers, state vendors or others was on a backup computer tape stolen from an intern’s car.”

link: 675,000 more names on stolen data tape

This brings the number of people whose personal information was breached to over a million. The estimate is that this security issue will cost the state over two million dollars. If all the people who had their personal information compromised took advantage of the state’s offer for identity theft protection, then the costs would be approximately ten million dollars.

What is surprising is that so few people have enrolled in the identity theft protection program. Perhaps some people think that identity theft will not happen to them.

Catherine Forsythe

[tags]ohio, data breach, privacy, security, identity theft, protection program, costs[/tags]