Florida Job-Seekers Now Have ID Theft to Add to Their Worries

Nothing like hitting them when they’re down.

Florida’s unemployment office, also known as the Agency for Workforce Innovation, experienced a computer security breach on an external test server in mid-October, inadvertently making public the names and Social Security numbers (SSNs) of about 250,000 residents who used the services of Florida’s One-Stop Career Centers between January 2002 and November 2007.

While the information was never posted to a public website, it was accessible by search engines during the two-and-a-half weeks it was public, the Florida agency reported.

Looks like some Florida job seekers now have more to worry about than the lack of a paycheck (as if that weren’t enough). That’s because fraudsters who use the stolen SSNs to open up new lines of credit can quickly damage their victims’ credit by going on a spending spree. Even aside from any possible monetary losses, victims could be forced to spend countless hours contacting creditors to repair their credit, time that could be better spent on their job search. And if job-seekers fail to check for damaged credit, it could come back to haunt them later, possibly jeopardizing their ability to get a job offer should prospective employers do a routine credit check and come across an ID thief’s handiwork.

Florida residents who used the One-Stop Career Centers during the stated period are being advised to check the Agency’s website to see if their name appears on the list of compromised identities, obtain a copy of their credit report to look for unauthorized transactions and carefully review all credit and debit statements.

In a world where millions of personal records are stored electronically, one small glitch can quickly become magnified a thousand times over. Whether it’s our state and federal government agencies, places where you shop or your own online Facebook account, confidential details, once they’re made known, can at least embarrass us or at worst cost us deeply in terms of stress, aggravation and time spent undoing the damage.

Is identity theft on your radar and if so, what do you do to safeguard your credit?

Tags: FL identity theft, Identity Theft

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