By Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Network World Data Center Newsletter, 04/12/05

While companies say they collect information on consumers to better serve them, the worst disservice they can do is to inadvertently expose customers’ private information. Every few weeks it seems that another huge number of credit cards or Social Security numbers (SSN) is stolen from a database. Consumers are understandably furious - they can buy shredders to make sure they’re not putting their private data out there, but what can they do when their data is mixed with millions of records in a poorly secured database?