Got A Letter Today From The Dept. of Veteran's Affairs

This regarding the stolen data. Wonderful. :sarcasm:
For those of you familiar with all of this, is there anything that I should be doing.......other than periodically checking credit reports?
Thanks in advance....

You can either keep a close eye on all of your accounts and credit reports, or open all new accounts.

They said there's no way to know who will be affected, or who's data got stolen. The VA did say that they will never call you, send you an e-mail or send you a letter. They said that they got the IRS to send it to us instead.

Big warning is beware of phishing, where the caller who says he's VA asks to verify your information. They're thieves.

Set moderately very low limits. If a charge exceeds that amount, tell them you want to notified immediately. Most will do that.

Your bank could also be advised to be more vigilant as well since you could be a victim of this national notice of greatly increased identity theft due to this government screw up.

I separated from the AF in Dec 1978 - possible that I'm one of the millions too?????

Your a member of the club.

my letter came a couple weeks ago. i put a fraud watch with Equifax. FREE for 3 months. they will notify the other bureau's for you.

all it takes is a phone call

But who knows how long it'll be before it's settled. Hopefully this background info will help. (I posted this in another thread.)

Paul Hackett sued the VA on behalf of Vets' stolen personal info.

From the "Cincinnati Enquirer:"

Former congressional candidate Paul Hackett sued the U.S. government Tuesday on behalf of the 26.5 million veterans whose personal information was stolen this month.

snip

The federal lawsuit asks a court to order Veterans Affairs to pay damages of about $1,000 per veteran and to cover the cost of credit monitoring services.

Link:

http://tinyurl.com/o44ka


Keep in mind that he's the PLAINTIFF, not the attorney filing the suit.

I'm no lawyer, but I do believe that in a class action suit an attorney cannot be a class representative and cannot collect attorney fees awarded to the class. Paul Hackett is representing this class.

He's suing on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans of America and four other veterans groups for compensation of $1,000 (each) and federally-funded credit monitoring.

The attorney who is representing Hackett and the vets is Chris Jenkins of Mezibov & Jenkins, a Cincinnati law firm.

Here's the entire class-action complaint which was filed in district court:

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/images/05/31/complaint.new ....

Try this one:

http://tinyurl.com/mpjcg

for your thoughts and advice on this. They're greatly appreciated. :)