Data Loss Source: An Army employee reported to the police that a laptop and a 500-gigabyte removable hard drive that he left on the seat of his unlocked truck overnight.
Date of Loss: July 11, 2008
Size of Loss : 900
Affected Individuals: Fort Lewis soldiers
Geographic Focus: Fort Lewis, WA
Data contained: The employee told police there was no classified information on the computer or hard drive. However, the Army has warned soldiers that they are at risk of identity theft.
Additional Notes: A 17-year-old boy was arrested and is being held under suspicion that he stole the laptop.
Additional Information: The Olympian

ABCNews.com posted an interesting story on how identity thieves are mining social networking sites to steal victims’ personal information.

Lisa Lockwood, a parent in Baltimore, received a phone call from a car dealership, saying that her 17-year old son had applied for a car loan. To make a long story short, her son had not filled out any such application. Rather, one of the games he was playing on his Facebook page offered extra points in exchange for filling out an application that asked for a Social Security number. He provided the information, filling out a total of seven loan applications.

Facebook says while they do allow games to be downloaded from its site, the games must be approved and meet its guidelines. The company is investigating this report.

Data Loss Source: Williamson County Schools accidentally posted the personal information of possibly thousands of students on the Internet, placing them at risk of identity theft.
Date of Loss: July 10, 2008
Size of Loss : 4,000
Affected Individuals: Williamson County Schools students
Geographic Focus: Franklin, Tennessee
Data contained: Social Security numbers and names
Additional Notes: A district employee working on a graduate degree accessed the information for a project. The information was then mistakenly placed on a personal Web page.
Additional Information: NewsChannel5.com

According to the Sacramento Bee, six Bay Area women were arrested for allegedly using stolen credit cards to buy more than $1 million of merchandise from malls between Sacramento and San Francisco have been arrested by the Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force.

Officials say that the women were members of a theft and credit card fraud ring that operates around the world. They have identified more than 400 victim account holders in the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia.

The six women, between the ages of 21 and 37, all have connections to the city of Richmond. Combined, they face more than 180 charges of identity theft and fraud. Three have pleaded guilty and are facing four to eight years in prison. The other three are awaiting trial.

The ring is still under investigation. Officials believe it has a dozen more members.

Data Loss Source: The Division of Motor Vehicles put 3.4 million Coloradans at risk of identity theft due to flaws in the way driver’s-license information is handled.
Date of Loss: July 10, 2008
Size of Loss : 3.4 million
Affected Individuals: Colorado residents
Geographic Focus: Colorado
Data contained: At one point, 33 former DMV employees could access names, addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers — some workers more than a year after their departure
Additional Notes: The division has a long-standing policy of redacting the last four digits of Social Security numbers before they’re transmitted, and the division plans to encrypt all transmitted information by June 2009.
Additional Information: Denver Post