As I noted earlier this month in discussing ABC’s coverage of firms just dumping paper records without shredding them, Florida law doesn’t seem to prohibit such disposal. Now there’s another story out of Florida, this one covered by News4Jax, that also involves improper disposal of personal and financial information on hundreds of people:
Jessica Menendez got quite a surprise when she looked in her recycle bin. Someone had dumped hundreds of files of people’s personal information, and she had no idea where they came from.
[…]
The manila folders Menendez found contained personal information of AT&T cell phone customers, including credit card numbers, driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers.
It appears the information was collected by another company called Ferrell Communication, which was located in a strip mall on Atlantic Boulevard. It’s no longer there, and the phone number listed isn’t valid.
The information is contracts for AT&T wireless service customers dating back to 1999 or 2000. The information is old, but could still be valid.
Read more on News4Jax.com. If you look at the video on the site, it appears that someone made a point of putting the folders neatly into a residential recycling bin in front of a home. So let me get this straight: the person who left them there is environmentally conscious and a recycler but clueless about proper protection of personal information?
Thanks to the good folks over at ITRC for letting me know I had missed this report when it first appeared a few days ago.