IRS got hacked

[jwlv]

ABC News reports that the IRS got hacked.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/apnewsbreak-irs-thieves-stole-tax-info-100000-31317464

More than 100,000 taxpayers got their information stolen directly from the IRS. This information includes some of the most private details about an individual, their work, their family, and other sensitive data.

What's the IRS going to do? Give the victims free credit monitoring. Hey, thanks IRS!

Companies getting hacked left and right, and all they are offering is credit monitoring. Kind of useless.

My credit card number was stolen just a few months ago. The thieves ordered something from a tractor company. I called my credit card company and they cancelled the card number and sent me a new card. This is extremely simple to do and very effective in stopping the thief. Nothing else can be done with the old card number.

Why can't we do this with our identity? Sure, our social security number is only 9 digits and we'll run out of numbers eventually. Why not increase the number of digits? And if a thief messes up your life with your SSN, why can't the Social Security Administration just cancel the stolen number and issue a new number? That seems to be the logical thing to do. Of course there should be a paper trail that shows what SSN's have been used previously by an individual.

Eventually every single person is going to get their identity stolen. The entire system is going to fail because of it, where no one can absolutely confirm anyone's identity. Something needs to change now or all of us will suffer in the near future.

[alot2do]

Thanks for the post. Very illuminating.

I agree that it is a scary situation. I have two different credit monitoring programs in place.  But the thing that scares me is if my stolen identity were used for medical fraud. That is more and more prevalent.

[jwlv]

As for me personally, my private information was stolen from the data breaches at Anthem Insurance, Home Depot, and Target. They all sent me letters saying that my information was stolen. I think the one from Anthem has the potential of being the most damaging. I have free credit monitoring from all of these companies. I also have free credit monitoring from two banks.

I do a lot of my banking online, whether it's Chase, a credit union, or Capital One. It surprised me when I asked them if I could open another account and have a completely separate login. They said no. I can have multiple accounts, but they would all be managed under one login. That seems incredibly stupid.

If you had three cars parked outside of your house, would you want to have only one key to unlock and drive any of the three cars?

If my login info got hacked, then the hacker would have access to every account I owned at that bank. If I had two completely separate logins, one for my personal checking and a second one for business checking, then only one account would be compromised.

I swear, so many businesses have so many incredibly dumb ways to do things.

Here's a really dumb thing that Yahoo Mail used to do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack

Apparently this hacker got into Palin's Yahoo Mail by answering a secret question that Palin set up, which was "Where did you meet your spouse?" and the hacker guessed "high school." He was right.

Those "secret questions" are just a backdoor for hackers to get in. If your secret question was, "What was your first car?" anyone can make a few guesses and probably get it right. Maybe Ford, Chevy, Nissan, Toyota...

[heapmaster]

I agree, this is why there should be two factor authentication on everything from your credit card to your SSN number, no one can use it until you auth it via two factor. And mind you two factor auths should have the ability to print out backup codes so you can re-auth yourself if the second factor is lost or stolen, unless your second auth is bio based.

[ScarlettPhoenix]

On the major credit cards I have, I've requested cards with chips in them. I change my password often and for those security questions, I answer the pet name or city ones. Those are some of the hardest to guess. I like the sites that lock you out after 3 attempts. Yeah- it's a pain in the tuchas if I don't remember the password, but hell-I've got the card and can always verify the information with a representative.
I also change up the way I spell the passwords I use and throw in meaningful numbers to me but no one (other than my family) would guess what they were.

Even with me being a hawk, I'm sure I'll get tagged.  Back in the day, I had my wallet stolen-4 days before Christmas. Fortunately, I keep my credit cards and my wallet separate-something I urge everyone to do. They got my wallet and checkbook. I was devastated. I was on my way to a performance and had to call my principal. I couldn't report it to the school police until Monday but I put a stop payment on the checkbook run and called the bank immediately.

After all of that, I still went through almost a year of embarrassing situations with Publix (a grocery store in South Florida) and TeleCheck. TeleCheck never cleared my name off of their system. Every few weeks, my name would pop up again and they would deny my check. So horrible!!

[heapmaster]

Thats pretty bad, but even those security questions can be guessed using simple social engineering or look ups of that data, the security questions are only good when they are questions that you dont put all over the place or are only known and used by you. Google search and facebook are a treasure trove of data and friends that may know that data.

[ScarlettPhoenix]

LOL!  I'm not exactly under the radar but rather flying along side of it...