What is profound about this, is that these are first, victims of the oil spill. They were damaged at some level from the BP spill. These people may have lost their livelihoods, their homes, or even a loved one.
Now, with this misplaced laptop - that stored this personal information in an unencrypted format - the victims of the spill may soon be victims of identity theft!
When it comes to identity theft, this is actually the most damaging form of breach. In the last several years, the price of a social security number has fallen (on the black market of course) from around $10-$16 in 2007 to just $0.50 in 2009 - according to Verizon. Part of this is because the prevalence of stolen social security numbers, but outlined in this report is how the data thieves acquire these numbers.
Most people would think that hackers, isolated in a dark room, running command line code against another computer is the most common way that these breaches occur - and it is, but this is far from the most damaging. Hacking accounts for only a small fraction of the breaches that result in your information being stolen.
The two most damaging are 1) internal employee breaches, and 2) a thief gaining personal access to this data (as what happened to BP). In fact, the amount of information stolen from laptops, and other physically accessible computers is staggering, and makes up the bulk of the personal information stolen.
The lesson from this, and unfortunately it is too late for BPs victims - who may become victims again shortly, is that companies need to take better care of their information. Selling customer information, leaving sensitive "victim" data out there to be taken, and other careless or unethical business practices are things that impact all of us.
