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At the end of 2007 I posted Threat Thursday: Data Breaches of 2007 to give everyone a feel for how frighteningly commonplace data breaches were becoming.  We had read about some of the larger ones that occurred at retailer, TJ Maxx (NYSE: TJX), Fidelity National Information Services, Fox News, Monster.com, TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. and the list goes on.

The few examples I chose were those organizations that experienced a breach that exposed personal data including social security numbers (SSNs) for millions of people.  The causes ranged from laptops containing the data were stolen, employees of an organization stole that information, SSNs were printed on the outside of envelopes (my favorite), organizations published information containing SSNs on websites, and databases or websites were hacked.

2008 isn't turning out much better according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC).  I decided to review what's been happening so far on the Chronology of Data Breaches section of their website for 2008.  To date, an estimated 218,202,156 records containing sensitive personal information have been involved.

This personal information is so valuable to other unscrupulous people and the organizations holding it seem so inept that I thought it necessary to put everyone on their guard against identify theft and remind them never to reveal this information.  Also, remain aware of your financial or credit accounts and report any activity that you can't identify.