400,000 More IDs Stolen (If Anyone Cares)

Two more ID theft stories in the news today. First, The Washington Post says that Lexis Nexis was a little off when it said that about 32,000 identities had been stolen from its database. Turns out it was more like 300,000. Oops. Meanwhile, The Boston Globe reports today that Tufts University, which is about a mile from my house, sent out a letter to 106,000 alumni alerting them that their names, social security and credit card numbers may have been stolen.

I hesitated before posting this, mainly because I have posted identity theft news in this blog before (here, here, and here for those of you keeping score) and nobody ever comments. So now it strikes me that the big story is that nobody seems to care. And that’s my question for the day. Why don’t you care about identity theft? Is it only an issue for financial service providers and data-brokers? Is it just never going to happen to you or your company? I read these headlines and think that the information community has a really big problem on its hands, particularly when the last paragraph of every article talks about politicians wanting to take action. What about you?