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Nearly 28 Million Texas Driver's Had Their Info Stolen (Data Breach)

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By atomheartbevo
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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89991

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Of course, because it's 2020.  Free credit monitoring, etc. being offered by them https://vertafore.kroll.com/

https://www.fox26houston.com/news/nearly-28-million-licensed-texas-drivers-hit-by-data-breach

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Driver's license numbers, names, birthdates, addresses, and vehicle registration information were stolen for nearly 28 million Texas drivers who received a license before February of 2019.

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An insurance software company called Vertafore, which has legal access to that DMV information, said in a statement the data was inadvertently stored in an unsecured storage service that was hacked between March and August of this year.

Vertafore says the company has known about the breach since mid-August. 

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The company says they reported it to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Texas Department of Public Safety and wrote, "Vertafore’s notice was delayed at law enforcement’s request."

Vertafore says they hired a third-party firm to investigate but identified no misuse of the information so far.
But James Lee with the Identity Theft Resource Center says give it time.

"It's something they may wait to use.  So you're not out of the woods just because a year has passed, two years have passed, three years have passed," Lee explained.

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The Texas DMV issued this statement regarding the breach:
"The breach of information was caused by Vertafore. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles was not hacked and was not the cause of the breach. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles takes protecting consumer information very seriously. The department classifies and protects data based on existing statutory regulations and industry principles, and retains and destroys all data in accordance with state and agency data retention and data sanitization policies.

"The department only allows outside use of information for reasons found in Transportation Code Chapter 730 and the Federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act. These laws permit, and at times require, the release of motor vehicle records to authorized parties."

Drivers can contact Vertafore to see if their information was hacked by calling 888-479-3560.  Vertafore says it is offering those impacted one year of free credit monitoring through Kroll, which will help resolve any damage to your credit report. 

The data was accessed

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The company released a statement Friday blaming human error on three data files being stored on an unsecured external storage service, where they were accessed by unauthorized personnel.

 

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Blotto

Blotto 23635

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At this point, I think its safe to assume that everyone has had some amount of personal information compromised to one extent or another through one or more data breaches. In a world full of dumb fucks, relying on companies to avoid "human error" seems futile. I lose track of the number of these that could possibly affect me.

When I moved back to Austin and was getting bills set-up, I recall both the COA Utility and others asking for my social security #. I was like what the fuck do you need that for to serve me power and pick up my trash. I actually had to put down a deposit on a couple of accounts because I refused to give them my SS#. I realize my SS# has probably already been hacked, but no reason to give it out more than necessary. Its crazy the companies that feel entitled to your SS# or even the last 4 digits. fuck that noise

Another pet peeve is the use of security challenge questions when enrolling in online services. Everyone uses the same fucking questions, so if one service gets hacked and its tied to your email, now that shit can be used to gain access to other online services. Fucking figure out a different way to police access to online accounts on your website. 

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atomheartbevo

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43 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Another pet peeve is the use of security challenge questions when enrolling in online services. Everyone uses the same fucking questions, so if one service gets hacked and its tied to your email, now that shit can be used to gain access to other online services. Fucking figure out a different way to police access to online accounts on your website. 

Most security questions could be answered in 5 minutes by looking at somebody's Facebook profile/posts.

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Blotto

Blotto 23635

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Most security questions could be answered in 5 minutes by looking at somebody's Facebook profile/posts.

True, but I don't have a publicly accessible facebook page and very little data beyond my name, highschool and college on the profile . And shit like "mother's maiden name", "first pet's name", "street name where you grew up" etc.... would be a pretty detailed facebook profile.

Still, challenge authentication for websites needs to move beyond  asking for readily available information. These companies should realize that the vast majority of their customers litter that information all over the web. I'd like to see these companies assume their customers are fucking idiots and devise an authentication scheme that works around that inconvenient truth. But I guess they don't have to, as people will use whatever they throw at them without a second thought. 

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staboner

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27 minutes ago, Wally Pryor said:

I had my identity stolen about 3 years ago.    Pain in the ass. 

Everyone should freeze their credit with the 3 agencies.  Easy to do, easy to unlock / allow access as needed.   

indeed. if you are in a position to do this i would. have a CC, a home, auto whatever and if nothing for a year then do this. 

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B00M

B00M 6558

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I received a notification for this several weeks ago.

I reached out to TX DPS. Received useless generic email reply a couple days later. 

I bought a certified copy of my driving record. 

I need to renew my license anyway to be "REAL" compliant so I figured I should be proactive and change my DL #.

To change your DL # you must report it lost/stolen to local PD and get a report #. I called 311 and told them of the notification and got a call back about 24 hours later.

Was told straight up that someone even physically stealing your DL does not meet DPS protocol to change the #. I have to be the victim of ID theft and there's nothing preventive I can do on this front.

My credit is frozen so there's not much anyone can do but I found this pretty laughable. 

 

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B00M

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33 minutes ago, Wally Pryor said:

I had my identity stolen about 3 years ago.    Pain in the ass. 

Everyone should freeze their credit with the 3 agencies.  Easy to do, easy to unlock / allow access as needed.   

Yup. Don't forget to lock your kid's credit too.

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atomheartbevo

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16 minutes ago, Blotto said:

These companies should realize that the vast majority of their customers litter that information all over the web.

Which is why there are actual regulations about data privacy in Europe, but not here in the US (it's why you get those pop-ups on some websites about their data policies, GDPR, etc.).  People over there are more concerned about sharing their private info than people here.

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atomheartbevo

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40 minutes ago, Wally Pryor said:

I had my identity stolen about 3 years ago.    Pain in the ass. 

Yep.  Real pain in the ass, because the involved government agencies and companies usually give no shits.

I only found out about it by accident.  Even then, the companies/agencies involved would not give me the full information on the data that was being misused, because somehow the motherfucker who stole my info has "privacy" rights as well.

The thing that blew me away was that the IRS and Social Security Administration both knew my SS # was being used by other people.  When I tried to log into my SS account, it was locking me out, because my information was not matching their records fully, indicating that somebody had been fucking around.  The IRS knew my number was being used by somebody else as well.  And the people at both agencies I talked to both admitted my information was being used.

It's like "hey you stupid chucklekfucks, get your COBOL programmers out of retirement, and start pulling information out that would easily catch and stop these people."  Nobody should be able to open up jack shit with my SS# and a different name.

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atomheartbevo

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9 minutes ago, B00M said:

To change your DL # you must report it lost/stolen to local PD and get a report #. I called 311 and told them of the notification and got a call back about 24 hours later.

Was told straight up that someone even physically stealing your DL does not meet DPS protocol to change the #. I have to be the victim of ID theft and there's nothing preventive I can do on this front.

Social Security Administration is worse:  They change a few dozen numbers a year, and I didn't meet the criteria, because my information was used for financial gain.  I was told the person who stole my info would basically have to be stalking me, and present a physical threat to me, and I'd have to have that documented with law enforcement.

They could absolutely fix this shit - it's not hard to run a database query and pull every number that has more than one name attached to it.  This came out before it happened to me, but still applies.

https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/odds-someone-else-has-your-ssn-one-7-6C10406347

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What are the odds someone else has used your Social Security number? One in 7.

That's the stunning conclusion of a San Diego company's analysis of 290 million Social Security numbers, which found that 40 million of them have been attached to more than one name. The study, conducted by the fraud-fighting firm ID Analytics, is the first of its kind that's been made available to the public.

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The IRS often knows when this happens, when the imposter pays taxes. The Social Security Administration knows, too, for the same reason. And the nation's credit bureaus usually know, because the imposter often ends up applying for some form of credit.  Plenty of financial institutions also have access to this information.

But no one is telling you. In short, all these government agencies and financial firms don't think you have a right to know.

 

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Bevo

Bevo 13628

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Yeah, I still don't get why our government doesn't care about online and identity theft fraud. There was something on 60 minutes awhile back and the FBI said they had too much other stuff to worry about. That excuse for me doesn't hold water. Organized crime is huge from programmers who hack Real estate agents and escrow agents to telemarketers who solicit information to fraudulent online sites that all use the same contact info. And the less the government does the more widespread the fraud gets and the more emboldened the bad guys get.

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

It goes back decades and includes dead people, people who moved out of Texas, etc. and I believe it includes ID's.

In other words, registered voters...

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52-80

52-80 19277

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There’s a few quite entertaining, well-produced videos on YouTube illustrating how using SSN as one of the main elements of personal identification is one of the dumbest ideas in existence.  For a country as advanced as the US, it is actually unfathomable.

 

Other countries have national identity cards, and especially they implement many mobile-based / 2fa authentication to access official services (gov, taxes, finance, etc) and it’s extremely secure and effective

 

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atomheartbevo

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2 hours ago, Bevo said:

Yeah, I still don't get why our government doesn't care about online and identity theft fraud. There was something on 60 minutes awhile back and the FBI said they had too much other stuff to worry about. That excuse for me doesn't hold water. Organized crime is huge from programmers who hack Real estate agents and escrow agents to telemarketers who solicit information to fraudulent online sites that all use the same contact info. And the less the government does the more widespread the fraud gets and the more emboldened the bad guys get.

Even if they don't want to investigate it, all the SSA, IRS, etc. have to do is flag any SS #'s being used by more than one person/address, determine the legitimate person and address (which wouldn't be hard), and then flag those numbers when they get used.  Employer files taxes/etc., IRS comes back with a notice that the SS # does not belong to that person.  Credit cards, loans, etc. can only go to the proper address on record.   

These are just simple checks in a database.

Like @52-80 said, it's bad.  Some have floated the idea that SSA/IRS don't want to fuck with it, because it's bringing in money.

 

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52-80

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10 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

 Some have floated the idea that SSA/IRS don't want to fuck with it, because it's bringing in money.

 

Another topic tangential to this is the requirement that every person has to file taxes yearly, despite the fact that the IRS damn well can determine the “correct” taxes for most of these folks (the one whose sole income is w2).

 

Like, these fuckers know if you missed your wages by 50 bucks, or if you neglect 80$ of dividend, but apparently not knowing of declare taxes (which you simply confirm), or at least prefill the majority of taxes (which the filers can complete)

 

In other countries, individuals whose income is simply employment earned income, the withholding is properly withheld, so everything is already paid for and complete.  Individuals have a 5 year window to voluntarily file, if they dispute it.

 

It will save everyone a ton of fucking time and costs....except the tax filing companies e.g. Intuit lobby the gov hard to block any legislative efforts towards simplification of taxes

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