State Farm customers in Surprise, Arizona were potential victims of an identity theft incident earlier this summer. In August, State Farm insurance had to notify over 40 state officials of the information breach involving the social security numbers, driver license numbers, addresses and financial accounts of several undisclosed agency clients. It is reported that the company has been having problems with several breaches in the past few months. The company has also had a problem with online employment applicants having their information exposed. This particular incident details that an agent of one branch office, was using the confidential information to open new credit card accounts. The number of those affected was not revealed, however, the police department in Surpise, Arizona have begun to investigate this breach. It has been reported that everyone affected has been contacted. They are being offered one year free credit monitoring by Trans Union.

Arizona Attorney General’s Office spokesperson, Anne Hilby, noted: “These are not situations where someone got a scam e-mail, these are situations where people were giving information to legitimate businesses that they should have been able to trust, and there was some sort of data breach or employee malfeasance.” What it highlights for our office is that consumers need to be constantly vigilant, checking their credit report, account statements, because even when you’re doing everything right, you can still become a victim.”

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Data Breach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.