Lucky me! My social security number, along with my name and address, have been compromised by the [tag]American Institute of Certified Public Accountants[/tag] ([tag]AICPA[/tag]).

They say that a computer of theirs failed, and someone sent out the hard drive for repair “in direct violation of the Institute’s [tag]internal control[/tag] policies and procedures.” The hard drive has been lost. The social security numbers of all members were on the hard drive.

They don’t know if anyone has accessed the information on the hard drive. (Notice that they don’t mention whether or not the information was encrypted to help in situations such as these.)

The AICPA is offering a free year of [tag]credit monitoring[/tag] to make up for the [tag]data compromise[/tag]. Yay. Trust me – I’d rather have my personal information safe. Oh. They’ve now decided to delete everyone’s social security number from their database and will not be collecting social security numbers anymore. That doesn’t really help the tens of thousands of us who have our data floating around already, does it?

Oh, and this happens within a week of my [tag]malpractice insurance[/tag] carrier letting a database compromise occur, and now information about my insurance policy with them is floating around out there.

Read my article about recovering from [tag]identity theft[/tag].