Free Credit Monitoring

In the past few years we have been inundated with news stories of irresponsible banks, insurance companies, and even government agencies that have left their networks open allowing the security of their data to be compromised. This year it was my turn.

I received a letter dated July 10th (yes it's been a while) that said that on February 27, 2008 BNY Mellon Shareowner Services, which is the agent for the Walk Disney Company stock that we own, let Goofy take boxes of back-up data tapes home with him. Unfortunately, he left the boxes in his car and Snidely Whiplash broke into his car and stole one of the boxes. In the boxes that Goofy left in his car for some unexplained reason, were data tapes containing my name, postal address, Social Security number, and all of my share ownership information.

Apparently, there was a delay in informing me of this personal security infraction because their Legal Department was trying to figure out a way to recuse themselves from any liability and transfer said liability to someone else, most notably - me!

For my "inconvenience", they are giving me 1 year of free credit monitoring service. Now, if my credit gets all fucked up because of Goofy's dumbass actions over there at BNY Mellon Shareowner services, I wonder what they will do for me then. I suspect that because I signed up for the free year of credit monitoring services, Bone-Head Mellon will be absolved of liability. Does anyone know how this works?

Why do companies continue to have such problems with their electronic data? Because they just don't care. When it's time to cut costs, cut the technology budget first. Because the President of the company cannot take a paycut. He'd leave the company - and then you'd have to pay him $400 million severance pay, even if he only worked for the company for 8 months. That's how it works. Screw the little people. It's all about the executives and their golden compensation. Of course it's fair that the top 3 executives at the company earn 50% of all compensation paid by the company. They are the ones responsible for making your 10 shares of the company go up 5% last year. Whoo-hoo!