H&R Block Mistake Exposes Social Security Numbers - Identity Leak

It's tax season, so how about a little news of identity leak from our good friends at H&R Block. Apparently someone in marketing thought it would be a good idea to use people's social security nubmers as an identifier on the outside of their marketing mailing. Oops! Companies need to start doing a better job safeguarding our personally identifiable information, eh?

"A mistake at U.S. tax return preparation firm H&R Block allowed Social Security numbers to be printed on unsolicited packages mailed out to customers.

The Social Security numbers were embedded in the 47-digit source code that appeared above the mailing label of packages containing H&R Block's TaxCut software.

'The Social Security numbers on the packages had no formatting that would make them stand out, and no one would have been able to easily identify them as a Social Security number,' said Denise Sposato, an H&R spokesperson.

The error affected 3 percent of a mailing that went out in early- to mid-December, Sposato said. 'The people affected had been our customers two to three years ago,' she added. Sposato did not reveal the total size of the mailing or the number of people affected."

From CIO-Today