Personal Data Theft of 3.3 Million People With Student Loans

by greg1usa | April 1, 2010 at 03:19 am

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Student Loan Information of 3.3 Million Borrowers Stolen

Educational Credit Management (ECMC) A company that acts as guarantor of Federal Student Loans announced that personally identifiable including, including names, addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of 3.3 Million people with Federal Student Loans has been stolen.

If you are an affected individual, you will receive a notification letter in the mail within the next two weeks. The notification letter will include a code that you will use to activate a suite of free credit protection services provided for you by ECMC through Experian

The announcement highlights how vulnerable we are when it comes to protecting our identity.

Despite efforts by the FBI and Department of Justice, Identity theft continues to rise, with fewer prosecutions and more occourances acording to a audit by the Inspector General.

Inspector General Glenn Fine in the report repeatedly cited a lack of leadership within the federal agencies, particularly in their efforts to satisfy the objectives of then-President Bush's executive order creating the Identity Theft Task Force in 2007.

Undoing the damage that identity theft can cause can be a long process. The Department of Justice says

Unfortunately, the damage that criminals do in stealing another person's identity and using it to commit fraud often takes far longer to undo than it took the criminal to commit the crimes.

The Federal Trade Commission is responsible for receiving and processing complaints from people who believe they may be victims of identity theft.

Under the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act , the Federal Trade Commission is responsible for receiving and processing complaints from people who believe they may be victims of identity theft, providing informational materials to those people, and referring those complaints to appropriate entities, including the major credit reporting agencies and law enforcement agencies.