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| Government Says Stolen VA Laptop Recovered | |
| 2006-06-29 | |
| WASHINGTON (AP) - The government has recovered the stolen laptop computer containing sensitive data for up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson announced Thursday. Nicholson also said there have been no reports of identity theft since the May 3 burglary at the Maryland home of an agency employee. "There is reason to be optimistic," he told reporters just before the start of another in a series of hearings Congress has had on one of the worst breaches of information security. "It's a very positive note in this very tragic incident," Nicholson said.
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| Posted by:Steve |
| #4 There is a Last Date Accessed field in most file systems. I don't know what O/S is on the laptop, but I'll wager that checking that file attribute and finding it has not been accessed since stolen should make folks feel a lot more comfortable. If the FBI says it hasn't, it works for me. |
| Posted by: Crolump Glereper5426 2006-06-29 18:27 |
| #3 I'm one of the 26 million. Has anyone contacted the 3 credit reporting agencies to freeze their accounts because of this incident? |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2006-06-29 18:21 |
| #2 USN,ret, I'm not sure, but I think you can have a freeze put on your credit by contacting the three credit reporting agencies, citing risk that your information has been stolen. At any rate, you are entitled to request a free copy of your credit history once every twelve months from each of the agencies, and to correct mistakes therein. It isn't a difficult process -- I fixed a bunch of minor things a year ago (they'd intermixed Mr. Wife's father's info with his own), and it's all still clean as of last week. ;-) Good luck! Experian TransUnion Equifax |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-06-29 14:58 |
| #1 Still too early (IMHO) to turn out the lights on this story; maybe the data analyst got the OK to take the computer home, but that still doesn't excuse the miserable higher-ups who tried to cover up the robbery, or their half-witted attempts to 'splain away what happened and simultaneously dump on poor ol' Mr. Data Analyst.' Those guys need to go! How many other Vets out there (besides me) now get to worry about their credit, even tho' the FBI says that all is well? |
| Posted by: USN, ret. 2006-06-29 14:26 |