Wow, identity theives are really getting aggressive

[Stark]

Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2005 4:19 PM
Subject: DMV Breakin nets 1,700 license blanks and 8,900 ID's

Personal Information Taken in Nevada DMV Break-In By KEN RITTER, AP



NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. (March 12) - Personal information from more than 8,900 people was stolen when thieves broke into a Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles office, officials said Friday.

A computer taken during the break-in contained names, ages, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, photographs and signatures of southern Nevada residents who obtained driver's licenses between Nov. 25 and March 4 at the North Las Vegas office, state DMV chief Ginny Lewis said.

The DMV had previously maintained that the information on the computer stolen in Monday's break-in was encrypted, making it virtually useless to thieves.

But Lewis said Friday that Digimarc Corp., the Beaverton, Ore.,-based company that provides digital driver's licenses in Nevada, told her Thursday the information was not encrypted, and was readily accessible.

Miz Nakajima, Digimarc spokeswoman, said Friday she could not comment on specifics about state DMV customers or the Nevada theft. The publicly traded company provides a service Nakajima called ``digital watermarking'' to motor vehicle departments in 34 states and the District of Columbia.

All 21 Nevada DMV licensing stations were ordered by the end of the day Friday to remove personal information from computers to prevent a recurrence, Lewis said.

The Nevada DMV planned to send certified letters by next week informing the drivers that their personal information had been stolen. They will be issued new licenses with new identification numbers, Lewis said.

The Nevada DMV data theft comes after personal information was stolen from a database owned by the information broker LexisNexis and from the giant data broker ChoicePoint Inc. Another data loss affected some 1.2 million federal employees with Bank of America charge cards.

Besides the computer, thieves took a camera, 1,700 license blanks and laminated plastic covers bearing the embossed state seal.

I heard that last week that BofA lost tape backups with information of a million federal employees, including Senator Patrick Leahy. Hopefully this sort of stuff will help spur congress make the punishment for these sorts of crimes very painful for the lowlifes who prey on other peoples credit and reputations.

 

[Nitemare]

Why not lay huge penalties on these companies that cough up our private information so readily?

Unencrypted my @ss

And to think some people probably stood in line for 6 hours only to have their identity stolen...

 

[EyeMWing]

Well, it looks to me like these aren't identity thieves, they're fake ID manufacturers (who can now make FLAWLESS fakes). They just happened to grab a computer with some bonus material. If this weren't in the news, they probably wouldn't even know.

 

[Stark]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Well, it looks to me like these aren't identity thieves, they're fake ID manufacturers (who can now make FLAWLESS fakes). They just happened to grab a computer with some bonus material. If this weren't in the news, they probably wouldn't even know.

now all they need to do is put a new picture on any of the ID card data already in the computers... so for anyone in retail: the next time you ask for this guy's license and it says "Joe Smith" from Nevada, you might want to call a manager.

😛