Skip Links

Network World

  • Social Web 
  • Email 
  • Close

Chase Card Services dumps customer details in landfill

By Chris Mellor , TechWorld , 09/08/2006
Newsletter Signup
  • Share/Email
  • Tweet This
  • Comment
  • Print

In an amazing display of incompetence, Chase Card Services has dumped tapes containing millions of customers' details in a landfill site.

The company will now have to tell 2.6 million current and former credit card customers of Circuit City that tapes containing their details were tossed out when they were mistaken for rubbish. Chase is apparently working with both local and national authorities to find out what happened but thinks they were in a locked box that was crushed and dumped in the landfill hole.

There is no evidence that the tapes or their contents have been accessed or misused, the company said. And CEO Rich Srednicki issued a statement promising that: "The privacy of our customers' personal information is of utmost importance to us, and we take the responsibility to safeguard this information very seriously." Interpretations for what "very seriously" means are open to discussion.

It's not the first time companies and banks have been careless with their customers' data. There have been several other recent instances of lost data tapes and inadequate data care:

* Iron Mountain, demonstrating vulnerability to data loss a second time, lost tapes in April 2006, relating to 17,000 Long Island Railroad employees and other customers.

* CitiGroup lost data on 3.9 million customers in June 2005, when tapes being delivered by UPS went missing.

* A group of U.S. banks had 676,000 customer records stolen in May 2005.

* Iron Mountain lost a box of backup tapes containing 600,000 current and former Time Warner employees’ personal data in May 2005.

* Canadian company Simmons Mattress switched from Iron Mountain to EVault because, when Simmons was hit with a region-wide power blackout in August, 2003, Iron Mountain, its disaster recovery supplier, Iron Mountain, was hit by the same blackout.

  • Share/Email
  • Tweet This
  • Comment
  • Print
Partner Content

Explore the Ultrium Edge

The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.

Find Out More

Disk and Tape Square Off

Discover what disk and tape really cost and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization

Download this White Paper

Don't Fall for the Myths

The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.

Review this information

information examination

An examination of information security issues, methods and securing data with LTO-4 tape drive encryption

Read this analysis

Comments (1)
Login
Forgot your account info?

Chase Card Services dumps customer details in landfillBy Anonymous on February 3, 2007, 1:39 pmbut they can "shark" credit payments by 15% when checks mailed on time but posted late on their end since they never make mistakes!!!!!!!!

Reply | Read entire comment

View all comments

Add comment
Anonymous comments subject to approval. Register here for member benefits.
Have a NetworkWorld account? Log in here. Register now for a free account.

Videos

rssRss Feed