GE Money Lost Backup Tape with 650,000 Card Holders Information

Personal information belongs to 650,000 US customers of J.C. Penney and up to 100 retailers, including 150,000 social security numbers in a backup tape was reported missing by GE Money. GE Money been trying to locate the backup tape since October but it simply vanished into thin air inside a storage vault owned by Iron Mountain. The authority believed the missing records have not been exploited in any way and insisted the incident is not an act of identity theft but a misplaced tape case.

GE Money has offered to pay for 12 months of credit monitoring for anyone whose social security number was lost but has not been able to identify the other retailers which customer information could be involved. I guess that’s what taking them so long to announce the missing data since October, they don’t know exactly which clients’ data were in there!

[via informationweek]