Gordaen’s Blog

In what appears to have become a very regular occurrence, another government organization has made a mistake that potentially gave out information about 21,000 of their users, including names, social security numbers, and all the other fun stuff necessary to steal one’s identity. Direct Loan Servicing was hit this time, but it wasn’t a matter of a lost computer–rather–they updated their software and a glitch caused users who were on the same step online to be able to see each other’s information.

Due to the problems, most of their site became inaccessible, including the Privacy Policy. The software was provided by Affiliated Computer Services, which has not announced a Press Release about the incident. Obviously, neither ACS nor DLS bothered to do adequate testing of the new software prior to releasing it to the millions who access the site.

No statement has been made about whether the government is going to provide credit monitoring to the 21,000 people affected. When the VA lost records for 26.5 million veterans, they issued a statement saying that all affected veterans would be provided credit monitoring for one year. When the missing data was recovered, the offer was rescinded.