Blue Cross Addresses Identity Theft Concerns

Blue-Cross Blue-Shield of Western New York says it is notifying tens of thousands of its members about identity theft concerns after one of it’s company laptops went missing.

Blue-Cross says a laptop hard-drive containing vital information about an estimated 40,000 of its members has been missing since last November.

The company is offering credit checks for its effected members and taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Any Blue-Cross members with questions are asked to contact the company’s customer service.

Identity Theft Rates Among Top Banks

Hugh Pickens writes “Consumers, regulators, and businesses lack objective tools to compare the incidence of identity theft across financial institutions and without such tools, consumers cannot ‘vote with their feet’ and choose safer institutions. Now a study by Chris Hoofnagle has analyzed 88,000 complaints submitted by victims to the FTC over a three month period in 2006 and found that Bank of America ranked highest of all firms in the study, with an average of 1,117 incidents over a three-month period. AT&T had 763 incidents, followed by Sprint Nextel, JP Morgan, Chase and its Chase and Bank One, and Capital One. When the estimated events are divided by the total deposits, the data show that HSBC, Washington Mutual, and Bank of America have the highest rates of identity theft. Hoofnagle said lending institutions should publicly report information about identity theft events such as the rate of identity theft; the form of identity theft attempted; whether it was a mortgage loan or credit card; and the amount of loss suffered as a result. would help consumers choose safer financial institutions. The full study(PDF) is available from the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.”