Chuck I've Been Schwab'd

Last week I received the following letter from Charles Schwab that they had lost a computer that contained unencrypted personal information including my name, social security number and account number. Given that I've got a few accounts at Schwab all associated with my name and SSN, let's assume they lost them all.

Click the images to see the letter.

How nuts is this? Another year and another supposedly high tech firm can't handle basic technology protocols like storing customer information on a server in a data center and if they need to store it on a laptop or desktop, then encrypt it so it can't be read.

And Schwab's letter? This obviously wasn't written by the folks who do the Talk to Chuck campaign.

1. "You may have been impacted..."
   No. I was impacted. Not may have been impacted. Someone has my personal info and it's Schwab's fault. I now have to monitor my credit reports once again.
   
   
2. "... a recent data incident."
   No. This was a process incident. It was a control incident. It was a security incident. Data was involved. But it was not a data incident.
   

And the line that really puts Charles Schwab in the leagues of Companies Acting Badly:

"It doesn't appear that the theft of this computer hard drive was intended for fraudulent purposes or identity theft".

Really? How do the braniacs at Schwab know the robber's intent? Have they spoken to them? Schwab can't monitor my credit reports so how would Chuck know if someone now had fraudulently taken out credit in my name? Even if Schwab could monitor my credit (which it can't) how would they know if a new credit card was taken out by me or fraudulently by someone who had stolen my SSN off their computer? Schwab can't and this line is useless and insulting.

Perhaps Schwab hired the same brilliant lawyers who helped BNY Mellon write that "we have no reason to believe your information has been or will be accessed or misused".

I checked Schwab's site to find their policy on personal information and found that they may have violated their own rules (click here to see their policy). According to Schwab, they "take steps to protect you from identity theft", including:

• using firewalls and encryption technology to protect personal information on our computer systems;
• training our employees on privacy and security to properly handle personal information about you.

Not quite a shining Chuck moment.

I tried calling the phone number Schwab gave in the letter and it was evident that this person and their supervisor were reading a script. In short, they didn't know when the theft occurred but could tell me it was in 2009 and they offered me a key fob random number generator to make my sign on to Schwab more complicated.

E*Trade and TD Ameritrade are offering me 25,000 frequent flyer miles to move my accounts. Will they have any better security over my personal info?

Charles Schwab joins IBM, Intuit and BNY Mellon as Companies Acting Badly for managing to lose my social security number and other personal information.