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| Susan Combs |
By Max Rodriguez, Backgate Website
TDCJ employees along with thousands of other ERS and TRS members have had their personal sensitive information such as social security numbers and addresses exposed online by the state of Texas for at least a year reported the Texas Comptrollers Office.
Comptroller Susan Combs apologized for what she called a human error, not an intentional cyber crime. The Texas Attorney Generals Office is investigating however. Combs says that 3.5 million Texans were affected.
Letters will go out Wednesday informing people that their personal information was vulnerable. A website - www.TXsafeguard.org - is now available and beginning Tuesday morning a toll-free phone line at (855) 474-2065 will also be open for Texans to check if they will be receiving a notification letter. Members are urged to check their credit report, and bank accounts for any unauthorized activity.
Lets see how many people are now victims of identity theft due to this " human error".
I'm an employee at Texas A&M University, and I was able to log in to the TRS website and view my own account information on Jan 12, 2011 without using a password. After the incident, I called TRS and told them what happened. I even let them know the error message that the website gave me at the time: "Our records indicate that you have been assigned an Online Access password but have not registered for MyTRS." The TRS rep I spoke with did not seem to be concerned about this. I am able to recall these details from Jan 12 because they were saved in a log of a chat I had with a friend immediately following the incident.
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