SSNs of 70 million US military veterans were compromised

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) inspector general is tracing a potential data breach affecting 70 million records of US military veterans.

 The investigation includes a defective hard drive the agency sent back to its vendor for repair without first destroying the data. Once the drive was diagnosed and found to be faulty, it was sent out for recycling, with millions of records still stored on it.

 A $2000.00 hard drive with millions of social security numbers is considered to worth millions or billions of dollars if it gets into the hands of a criminal. The hard drive should have never left the facility and should have been destroyed. The Pentagon requires that old or defective drives be de-magnified or destroyed.

 .Previously, NARA lost a hard drive with 100,000 Social Security numbers. In 2005 the Department of Veterans Affairs lost personal records of 26.5 million veterans and eventually settled a class action suit over the breach by paying out $20 million.

 Obviously, this data will let a thief open any account such as a credit card and have the card sent to a different address. This is true identity theft. New account fraud destroys the victim’s credit and is a mess to clean up.