Martin McKeay just posted a link to this article. Looks like “the material represents personal data of all living veterans who served and have been discharged since 1976″. Well, that includes me, my buddy Martin, several of my family members, and every friend that I served with.
John Kerry said he was going to propose legislation to have the VA pay for credit monitoring for all those affected. I won’t hold my breath until that it passed.
Here is a direct link to the FAQ page on www.firstgov.gov. I have an issue with a few things on this page:
1. Some spouse information was also on the laptop. If / when they pay for monitoring, are they going to include the spouses?
2. “…the VA is taking all possible steps to protect and inform our veterans.” That’s a load of crap. If they were, they would be paying for monitoring now, no questions asked.
3. They suggest 4 steps to take if you suspect suspicious activity on your accounts. I don’t see anything in there about contacting the VA. They give a 1-800 number to call about this, but it looks like it is for info only. Hmmm… Guess they don’t want to know.
Yea, this looks like a boondoogle.
Vet
We can only hope the thief was only out for the laptop and not the data (and doesn’t know how to exploit it). What a frustrating situation – people who served our country are now a target due to some imbecil’s irresponsible actions. That guy needs to be thrown straight into the den of the identity thieves and spammers.