Breached: ID thefts

An auditor lost a small external hard drive for a laptop computer. Personal data, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other identifiers for 23,500 students, faculty and staff in the California State University system were contained on the missing hard drive.
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"There's no reason to assume that suddenly in July 2003 all these computer security breaches started occurring," said Joanne McNabb of the Office of Privacy Protection in the California Department of Consumer Affairs. "It's just that we know about them now, when we didn't hear before."

Not only do we now know about these breaches, but now we also know how these breaches happen.