Security Breaches

John Wayne Airport terminals were evacuated Sunday evening and passengers were herded off airplanes after a passenger passed a security checkpoint without being screened, authorities said. Hundreds of travelers, including those who had already boarded, had to undergo a second security check, said Nico Melendez, spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration. Six outgoing flights were delayed as passengers were rescreened and reboarded, Melendez said.

Cal Poly Pomona officials are notifying more than 31,000 current and former students and employees, as well as a number of student applicants, that hackers may have gained access to files containing Social Security numbers and other information. Ron Fremont, Cal Poly's associate vice president for university relations, said authorities have no evidence of misuse of any data in the June 29 incident. The main student database was not affected, he said.

An extremely apologetic Bank of America representative called me the other day with the news that I had fallen victim to one of the hazards and vicissitudes of post-modern American life: the theft of one's Social Security number from the files of a major international corporation. BofA reported that my number, along with my name, address, telephone number and online banking ID, were all stored in a bank laptop stolen from a car in the Bay Area five weeks ago.

Data apparently stolen from popular clothing retailer Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. is forcing banks and credit card issuers to notify thousands of consumers that their credit card information may have been exposed. HSBC North America, a division of London-based HSBC Holdings, confirmed Thursday that it had begun notifying holders of the HSBC-issued, General Motors Corp.-branded MasterCard that criminals might have obtained access to their credit card information and that the cards should be replaced.

Security breaches at information broker LexisNexis gave outsiders access to the personal data files of as many as 310,000 people -- about 10 times more than originally thought, the company said Tuesday. The disclosure increased the likelihood that lawmakers, angry about security lapses at U.S. data aggregators, would impose tighter rules on the largely unregulated industry that keeps detailed records about virtually every adult in the nation.

U.S. regulators voted Friday for a policy that would require banks to notify customers in certain cases of identity theft -- a proposal that consumer activists called inadequate. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. officials said the proposal, which its board of directors approved, had nothing to do with recent disclosures of security breaches at information brokers ChoicePoint Inc. and LexisNexis, as well as at Bank of America Corp.

The chief executive of information broker ChoicePoint Inc. told interviewers last week that a recent security breach was the only such incident in the company's history, despite the fact that criminals had gained access to its database with similar methods at least once before. "This is the first time that that kind of process has really happened for us," Derek Smith said in a Feb.

The number of people being notified that they may have been caught in a massive identity-theft scam quadrupled Wednesday -- to 145,000 -- amid calls for better protection of personal information. ChoicePoint Inc., one of the nation's largest collectors of consumer data, said it would warn 110,000 people outside California that con artists posing as merchants had looked at information including addresses, phone listings, Social Security numbers and credit reports.

Four computers containing the Social Security numbers and other personal information of some Wells Fargo & Co. borrowers were stolen last month in the third such security breach in a year, the San Francisco bank said Tuesday. Wells Fargo said the thefts occurred in early October from the Atlanta office of Napa, Calif.-based Regulus Integrated Solutions, which handles billing for banks.

The U.N. on Monday proposed a major overhaul of its security apparatus, including 778 new positions, in response to devastating safety reports after the 2003 bombing of its offices in Iraq. In a report to the General Assembly, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the world body needed a new directorate of security, based in New York, to unify its myriad safety structures around the world. "A degree of risk cannot be avoided," he said. "The challenge is to mitigate it."