Fidelity's stolen laptop & customer service

[Nords]

The bad news is that a Fidelity rep's computer was stolen with info on HP (and DEC and Compaq) employees' 401(k) & pension accounts.

The "less bad" news is that Fidelity was the first to break the story, notified the credit-reporting agencies, boosted security on the customers' accounts, told the customers that they'd get free credit reporting for a year, and promised to reimburse them for any unauthorized activity. IOW there appears to be a significant damage-control effort.

Maybe all this effort is because Fidelity doesn't want to lose one of their lucrative customers of their biggest source of revenue, but at least they're acting instead of stonewalling.

I wonder if Fiorina or Capellas still have accounts with HP or Fidelity.

I wonder if that laptop was an HP product.

 

[Danny]

The bad news is that a Fidelity rep's computer was stolen with info on HP (and DEC and Compaq) employees' 401(k) & pension accounts.

The "less bad" news is that Fidelity was the first to break the story, notified the credit-reporting agencies, boosted security on the customers' accounts, told the customers that they'd get free credit reporting for a year, and promised to reimburse them for any unauthorized activity. IOW there appears to be a significant damage-control effort.

Maybe all this effort is because Fidelity doesn't want to lose one of their lucrative customers of their biggest source of revenue, but at least they're acting instead of stonewalling.

I wonder if Fiorina or Capellas still have accounts with HP or Fidelity.

I wonder if that laptop was an HP product.

Why do these outfits let their employees download to laptop?
Keep one secure database and let them use under secure setup.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

My thoughts exactly.

 

[Nords]

Why do these outfits let their employees download to laptop?

I think they're going to go to thumb drives...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Besides the lax security, its pretty amazing how badly some companies want to hold onto your frequently worthless account data, even if you vehemently want them to delete it.

Ameritrade told me they had deleted my acct info, yet I was able to log into my account a month later. When I called, I was warmly told that they would like to leave my account open in case I wished to return. When I confirmed that I positively would not, and then called again a month later to say that I could STILL log in, the log in stopped working. $5 says they just turned the login off and kept the account data including the checking account link. Of course, a portion of their user info was hacked shortly thereafter.

Paypal went a step further, pointing to their terms of service that said they are allowed to keep my account, bank and credit card info forever. I advised that I would change all of the numbers, rendering their data worthless (and be further pissed at them) or they could remove it and make life easy for all of us. No deal...go ahead and change your numbers was the response. So done. They've been hacked several times since for user data.

Its fine to want to keep info to inflate your subscriber numbers or be able to do demographic or purchase analysis of my personal data.

Just dont be careless with it.

 

[Nords]

Its fine to want to keep info to inflate your subscriber numbers or be able to do demographic or purchase analysis of my personal data.
Just dont be careless with it.

Maybe we should tell those companies that we're closing the accounts pending bankruptcy proceedings... or because we don't have access from Death Row.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I'm almost ready to start using a separate bank account and credit card for each major outfit I deal with like paypal, vanguard and so forth where links are required, then close the accounts at the bank and credit card companies.

These bozo's all keep the info and then eventually lose it to someone.

At least the banks and credit card companies probably delete the stuff. I think.

AIYEEEEEEEEEEE!

 

[farmerEd]

If you guys had any idea how lax things are with handling this type of data.....

I was a consultant/contractor for over 10 years working for one of the very biggest financial services companies you've all heard off...not only do I have copies of just about every account (for the business segment I worked with), I had every single buy/sell transaction for close to 10 years (hundres of millions of transactions and accounts), daily asset/position balances for the entire period, ssn#'s wife's names, address, spouses etc...all neatly stored on my severs in the cellar of my house (my home office)...probably its all still there if the disks haven't gone bad (turned off the servers the day I retired 4 years ago)...

No one ever question why I accumulated all this data, or why I had it...and never asked for it to be returned when I left...

I also had/have a complete copy of the High-Net-Worth and Ultra-High-Net Worth investor accounts for this same firm with even more detail information about each person (including kids names, birthdays etc)...a smorgasboard of data that could be abused if I was that type of person....

Never even once was asked to sign a non-compete or non-disclosure agreement, and they handed the data over to me 2 days after they hired me, to take home with me and use on my own PC's...mind boggling.

Also worked on a y2k set of projects for one of the biggest credit card processors...same lax security...given dial-in access from home computer with pretty much free access to anything I wanted...no questions asked...no bonding, no surety, no non-disclosure, not even any threatening mumbo-jumbo from the legal departments....