Government Agencies Not Protecting You From Identity Theft
Filed Under Identity Theft Protection
If you already didn’t have enough reason to invest in some identity theft protection, here is some living proof. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is reporting that most federal agencies are not doing enough to protect personal information they are in care of.
Following the 2006 Veteran’s Affairs incident that put at risk veteran’s personal information, the White House Office of Management and Budget put forth a series of five recommendations aimed at curbing future events that could lead to identity theft.
You might remember that in 2006, a computer hard drive containing millions of names, birth dates and Social Security Numbers was stolen from a VA employee’s home. The hard drive was later recovered, but this incident highlight the need to increase the security of sensitive, personal information that is in the care of government agencies, to reduce the potential of identity theft.
The GAO recently released a report outlining the compliance of 24 federal agencies that were supposed to comply with the five recommendations put out after the 2006 VA incident. Only two agencies met with all five recommendations. Two of the 24 had met with none of the recommendations, while the other federal agencies met the recommendations to varying degrees.
It is incredibly disturbing to think that these federal agencies place the security of personal information at such a low level of urgency. To think that while we are required to provide a federal agency with sensitive, personal information, they are not taking the problem of identity theft seriously and are not doing enough to prevent identity theft.
This just goes to show that you need to take your identity security in your own hands and do everything that you possibly can to make sure that you do not become a victim of identity theft!
Identity theft is a big problem and it is only getting bigger. You must do all that you can to ensure that you do not become a victim of identity theft. We recommend that you use a service, such as LifeLock, to lock down your credit report and make it much harder for you to become a victim of identity theft.
Tags: id theft protection, idenity theft, identity protection, Identity Theft Insurance, identity theft prevention, Identity Theft Protection, Prevent Identity Theft, preventing identity theft
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