Ameritrade Client Data for 6 Million Stolen

This past Friday, online brokerage firm
Ameritrade announced the contact data
for 6,300,000 clients had been stolen when
hackers breached the company's database.

According to the Kansas City Star:

"Online brokerage TD Ameritrade Holding Corp.
said Friday that one of its databases was
hacked and contact information for its more
than 6.3 million customers was stolen.

A spokeswoman for the Omaha-based company
said more sensitive information in the
same database, including Social Security
numbers and account numbers, did not
appear to have been taken."

Possibly, this time Ameritrade only lost contact information such as
email addresses.

But given their past history, who's to insure the hackers may
not have breached the more sensitive information such as
social security numbers ( ssn) in an earlier attempt which
may have gone un-noticed or even unreported?

So, our tip for today is to not rely on "for profit" organizations
to protect your precious identity and credit profiles.

Get your own protection and be safe in knowing you are
proactively insuring your risk of identity theft has been
lessened by adopting preventative measures such as
credit monitoring, opting out of credit solicitations,
& eliminating paper statements via USPS mail.