[Dataloss] Boxes Full Of Personal Information Found In The Trash

[MKEVHILL at aol.com]

_http://kotv.com/news/local/story/?id=133886_ 
(http://kotv.com/news/local/story/?id=133886) 
 
 
Private information, free for the taking is discovered in the trash. Bixby  
police say a company was willing to let anyone, including identity thieves, 
have  access to thousands of social security numbers, bank records and more. 
Utica  Title and Escrow went out of business and put about 200 boxes of personal 
papers  in a storage unit. The storage company says they stopped paying their 
monthly  rent, so the storage place had no choice but to get rid of everything. 
News On 6  crime reporter Lori Fullbright reports they had no idea the boxes 
contained a  mother load of private information, including social security 
numbers, bank  accounts and pay stubs. 
An anonymous tip led Bixby police to a stack of boxes in and a trash dumpster 
 Tuesday night. Officers couldn't believe the gold mine of personal 
information  they found. Authorities say an identity thief could've turned the 
information  into millions. 
"It was amazing. I didn't understand how big it was until I got to the scene  
and saw for myself, looked through the boxes and saw how much stuff was in  
there," said Bixby Police Chief James Kite.  
The boxes belonged to Utica Title and Escrow and had been stored at a storage 
 unit in Bixby. When Utica quit paying rent the storage company went through 
the  legal process to be able to sell everything left behind, and whatever 
doesn't  sell is trashed. No one wanted to buy boxes of paper so the boxes were 
thrown  out. 
[...]
Mike



************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at 
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://attrition.org/pipermail/dataloss/attachments/20070816/951dea6d/attachment.html