Thomas Hargrove writes:
The Social Security Administration has failed to inform tens of thousands of Americans that it accidentally released their names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers in an electronic database widely used by U.S. business groups.
The federal agency has kept silent about a potentially harmful security breach of the personal data of about 14,000 people each year, ignoring recommended reporting guidelines for such confidentiality breaches and violating the intent, at least, of the U.S. Privacy Act which protects personal information of private citizens.
Read more on The Republic.
Just to put this in context: SSA’s error rate is 0.00156%
And you want them to apologize for that?
Mistakes happen.
If there is any other human organization with an error rate that good, please let me know, as I’d like to invest.
So if an entity has a generally good rate, hapless victims of its rare errors don’t need to be notified?
Yes, mistakes happen. Own up to them. If you’ve put someone at increased risk of identity fraud, you owe it to them to at least warn/alert them.
Ay Ay