It's the LAST DAY to donate and pick up any of our thank-you gifts at a discount. 🔥 Give Now!
Codebreaker

Big security breach in Texas

John Moe Apr 12, 2011

Texas, you better sit down for this. Texas State Comptroller Susan Combs announced on Monday that the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other information of 3.5 million residents in the state was sitting on public server, exposed, for over a year. Whoops. From Ars Technica: “So far, the state says there’s no indication that the data was misused, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t or won’t be sometime in the future. In addition to the aforementioned personal information, Combs said that other data, like date of birth and driver’s license numbers had been exposed “to varying degrees.” Additionally, “all the numbers were embedded in a chain of numbers and not in separate fields”–good if only lazy “hackers” accessed the file, but bad because it ensures that the appropriate data is matched with other data from the same person.” Combs recommends people put a fraud alert out to all their credit card companies and keep a close watch out for any sign of identity theft. Thanks a lot, Texas.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.