June 18, 2007

U.S. Military Personnel Are Prime ID Theft Targets

U.S. military personnel have emerged as prime identity theft targets. The Department of Defense since the late '60s has used Social Security numbers for everything from dog tags to chow-line rosters. Now, data thieves and con artists have begun to increasingly target military personnel, data security experts say. "Thieves know this is the Achilles' heel of the system," says Todd Davis, CEO of identity theft detection firm Lifelock. Data thieves in the past year have grabbed computers containing sensitive data for nearly 30 million active and retired service members from four Veterans Affairs offices.

Military personnel prime targets for ID theft, USA Today, June 15, 2007.