Sponsored Content WEBINAR: ELECTION 2008: E-mail Tips from a Political Insider   WEBINAR: Becoming the Illusionist: The Magic of Using "Brand" to Drive Response without Results Disappearing in the Process   WEBINAR: Score and Win Through Cooperation   TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Holiday's are prime-time for email marketing - maximize your ROI by getting to the inbox   ON DEMAND WEBINAR--MASTER CLASS: High Performance Online and Off-line Strategies for Large Scale Customer Acquisition   FREE WHITE PAPER - Direct Mail and the Internet Find any supplier you need - agencies, CRM, fulfillment, lists, e-commerce, paper, printers, telemarketing, and more. Featured Categories Lists and Data Telemarketing Database Marketing E-commerce Web Marketing Agency & Creative Services Print, Production & Paper Lists and Data Processing :: view all categories Get free access to more than 50,000 list data cards - one of the most comprehensive databases in the industry. >> Search Now DIRECT Buzz Blog Webinars Buyer's Guide Calculators JobZone ListFinder Promo Calendar Research Store E-Newsletters Print Magazine This Month in Direct Magazine Deal With It Direct had a full house for this year's list roundtable. Considering all the additional responsibilities on brokers' plates, that's impressive... See Full July Issue

FROM THE THIS-IS-JUST-TOO-rich-to-pass-up file: The Federal Trade Commission noted recently that two of its laptops, containing the personal information of about 110 people, had been stolen.

Some FTC lawyers reportedly were using the computers to prepare a case when the machines were taken from a locked car.

Yep, this is the same FTC that's responsible for making sure marketers don't get sloppy with their customers' personal information.

The incident followed a well-publicized Veterans Affairs snafu in which one of its employees had a laptop lifted from his home. That machine held information on as many as 26.5 million veterans.

The federal government considers data security serious business. According to DMA president John Greco, six House and Senate committees are working on some sort of data security legislation. How much you want to bet that none of them are called the “Don't Store People's Information on Laptops and Take Them Home” Act?

After a $10 million settlement with consumer data collector ChoicePoint last January over the company's alleged mishandling of people's files, FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras offered the following warning. “The message to ChoicePoint and others should be clear: Consumers' private data must be protected from thieves. Data security is critical to consumers, and protecting it is a priority for the FTC, as it should be to every business in America.”

After the FTC's laptop incident, Betsy Broder, the agency's assistant director for privacy and identity protection, reportedly told Reuters: “We wish this hadn't happened. No data security is perfect, and we're going to use this as a way to improve our practices and security.”

A way to improve practices and security? How? With a seminar entitled “Don't Leave Laptops Unattended in Your Car Where Thieves Can Spot Them, You Morons?”

Oh, no. That would be way too direct and to the point.

Rather, the FTC said it would provide free credit monitoring for the 110 people whose names, addresses, Social Security numbers — and, in some instances, financial account numbers — were taken in the laptop incident.

If the people decide they like the credit protection, they simply do nothing and the FTC will bill their credit cards $49.95 a year for continued coverage. (Just kidding on that last point.)

Ironically, the FTC was investigating the people whose information was stored on the computers for possible identity theft. It would just be too much to ask that a bunch of identity thieves get their identities stolen as the result of carelessness by the federal agency charged with preventing identity theft.

More likely, the thieves probably took the computers for crack money or some such thing, and never will know there was valuable information on them.

In any case, the FTC also said it's developing data security measures that would require employees to remove personally identifying information from laptops before taking them out of the office. If the data is needed for an investigation, an FTC manager will have to grant permission before anyone can leave the building with the machine.

So let's get this straight: To prevent a recurrence of a data loss caused by carelessness, the FTC has decided that its laptops — which common sense says shouldn't have any personal information on them to begin with — must be cleaned of such data before being removed from the premises. That is, unless a manager authorizes it.

Now, if an FTC lawyer leaves a laptop holding personal information in a place where thieves can spot it — locked inside a car or not — and it gets stolen, at least the lawyer had the OK to keep that information on the laptop and take it outside.

Now there's a crime deterrent.

Crackhead 1: “Hey Johnny, check out that car over there. It's got a laptop on the passenger seat. What do you say we pop the window and grab it?”

Crackhead 2: “No way, man. I hear they only take those things out when they have permission. Better leave that one alone.”

Boeing Co. now requires laptops to be physically locked with a cable to a stationary object at all times — whether they're in offices, conference rooms or cars — so that no one can walk away with them, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Maybe FTC lawyers should be physically locked to a stationary object at all times while preparing their cases. Then they might realize that losing people's data is losing people's data no matter who loses it.