Britain is going through a tough period of news surrounding identity theft cases.  Not that they are alone in this problem, but they seem to be appearing on top of many sites proclaiming that businesses need to be held accountable for the practices which are resulting in the identity theft of British citizens.  At one point, identity theft was a tricky process that did not propagate itself as easily as in the modern day.  Now, people are able to go online and purchase and sell stolen credit card, bank account, and personal identification numbers and wipe their hands clean of the whole business while the victim is left to deal with the ramifications of all the actions.

Credit card companies have said that they are trying to help people protect their information and that they want to work with consumers to make the process easier.  Someone should remind the customers of Barclaycard that such a dialogue has taken place.  It would seem that Barclaycard has accidentally sent out all the information on 17,000 of its customers to other customers.  While printing out a monthly balance, something went awry between the account statement printer and the mail label printer, resulting in everything being off when it was supposedly sent to the right recipient.

The most damaging thing about this data breach is that the statements not only show the name of another customer, but also their address,, credit card number, limited password information, and previous billing habits.  Not only is this a violation of financial security, but the privacy of all of these people has been torn asunder.  Barclaycard has said that it will be sending out the correct account statements later this week and it will also be issuing a written apology to everyone affected by the incident.

Although there has been no confirmed word on the content of this apology, an insider who wished to remain anonymous, said that the apology will provide a guarantee that this type of mistake will not happen again.  While this is a great promise, it may be a difficult one to keep, although some security firms offer services that are supposed to prevent this exact type of incident.  Either way, steps will be taken to prevent any identity theft from resulting from this breach.  The Information Commissions Office has demanded to know what steps Barclaycard is taking for the future and has threatened to file a legal claim against the company.

Some of the card holders are actually American and have a Barclaycard as part of their business transactions.  While the extent of this connection is not yet known, it is advised that these individuals look into an ID theft subscription service.  Lifelock, one of the most popular companies that provides this service, has a record acknowledged for its success.  It maintains connections at the three major American credit bureaus and monitors member accounts for any new credit card or loan applications.  When these are found, they are verified with the named individual to make sure they are legitimate, at which point they are processed.  However, if they are fraudulent, they are stopped before identity theft takes place.

Tags: Barclay, Britain, lifelock

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 8:27 am and is filed under Corporate Breaches, Individuals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.