It started on Feb. 15, 2005 with ChoicePoint (Alpharetta, GA) by bogus accounts established by ID thieves. The initial number of affected records was estimated at 145,000 but was later revised to 163,000.
The latest entry is on Dec. 9, 2006 when Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA) Personal information of 561 students was inadvertently sent as attachments on Nov. 20 in an e-mail, including names, SSNs, local and permanent addresses and grade-point averages. The e-mail was sent to 195 students to inform them of their eligibility for scholarships.
We’re talking about a chronology of data breaches that have been reported because the personal information compromised includes data elements useful to identity thieves, such as Social Security numbers, account numbers, and driver's license numbers. Some breaches that do NOT expose such sensitive information have been included in order to underscore the variety and frequency of data breaches.
However, the authors have not included the number of records involved in such breaches in the total because they want this compilation to reflect breaches that expose individuals to identity theft as well as breaches that qualify for disclosure under state laws.
The running total they maintain at the end of the Chronology represents the approximate number of *records* that have been compromised due to security breaches, not necessarily the number of *individuals* affected. Some individuals may be the victims of more than one breach, which would affect the totals.
They usually update the list twice each week.
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