Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

Wanna know what really irks me? The latest public radio ads I keep hearing on TV. They are set to corny country music, trying to be humorous about something that is not humorous at all. In the ad, a guy sings a song, telling why he is now working at a cheap diner trying to scrape by– because he didn’t protect his identity and it was stolen… and he was robbed out of his skin. So, he works three lousy jobs trying to build his life back again.

Hardy har har! So funny! The ad ends with the government telling you how you really should protect your identity more.

Then I read stories like this one:

Personal information on about 650,000 customers of J.C. Penney and up to 100 other retailers could be compromised after a computer tape went missing. GE Money, which handles credit card operations for Penney and many other retailers, said Thursday night that the missing information includes Social Security numbers for about 150,000 people.

The information was on a backup computer tape that was discovered missing last October. It was being stored at a warehouse run by Iron Mountain Inc., a data storage company, and was never checked out but can’t be found either, said Richard C. Jones, a spokesman for GE Money, part of General Electric Capital Corp.

Jones said there was “no indication of theft or anything of that sort,” and no evidence of fraudulent activity on the accounts involved.

Iron Mountain spokesman Dan O’Neill said it would take specialized skills for someone to glean the personal data from the tape. He said the company regretted losing the tape, “but because of the volume of information we handle and the fact people are involved, we have occasionally made mistakes.”

Uhhh.. occasionally? When else have we been notified of these occasional mistakes? They are popping up left and right!

It irks me to no end to be hounded over “protecting” my “identity” when God-knows-who else has it and “loses” it; and without penalty, too. These companies should be driven out of business. Funny thing is, the companies’ names are one of the best kept secrets in the country!