Gov't Can't Tell People About Free Credit Monitoring From The VA
from the shhhhhhhhh dept
The continuing screwup of the Veterans Affairs data leak continues. We've noted in the past that every time one of these leaks come out, the leaking organization thinks the can get away with paying for a year's worth of credit monitoring -- which is exactly what the VA announced last week. Of course, the salivating class action lawyers aren't happy with that solution and have convinced a judge to ban the VA from promoting this offer, because it could prevent those people from getting even more out of the government from a class action suit (it's likely the offer includes language that people sign, saying that accepting the offer makes the ineligible for other attempts to collect). The lawsuit wants the credit monitoring to be permanent -- and $1,000 for each person whose data was lost. Of course, at this point, it seems a bit silly to say the VA can't advertise their offer, since the press has already discussed it widely (and it's getting further discussion because of the ban). While there's still no evidence that the data has been used or even noticed by the thief, those at risk should get credit monitoring turned on as quickly as possible. Why not just say that accepting the VA offer doesn't preclude other settlements at a later date?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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A smart thief...
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Why this is a lose-lose situation for the armed fo
A) because our information once again is out in the open
and
B) because even if we do get some money out of this, its coming from the VA! That money could be going towards something actually benefitting us... If only the criminal and the idiot that lost the info could be caught and held accountable for this. If we could only make the criminal and "the analyst" go through all of the mail that we are going to get from spammers and watch all of our credit reports...
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Re: Why this is a lose-lose situation for the arme
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Re: Why this is a lose-lose situation for the arme
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I for one will accept the free monitoring...
All I have to say about it is, if the free monitoring shows problems who is going to pay to clean it up?
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For example:
Dear Overbenefitted Employee:
Don't be a d**k and place sensitive personal data belonging to US citizens on your laptop - or anywhere else besides your desktop. Got it?
Love,
Uncle Sam
P.S. Get back to work, don't leave until 5:00, and do something, dammit!
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Re: JerseyRich
One of the few jobs that I know of that actually gets paid close to private sector rates is Postal Service because they have to directly compete with DHL, UPS, FEDEX, and other parcel carriers for "less training required" employees. The only exception to the rule of thumb of government employees getting less pay to make up for cost of benefits that "I" know of is the politicians and their croneys. But then again, the suits always make more even in the private sector.
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