Retirees

Retirees voice anger
over data leak

More credit monitoring needed, they tell
panel

By J.L. MILLER • The News Journal • September
28, 2010

DOVER — State retirees angered by a data breach
that landed their Social Security numbers on the
state’s website told the panel that oversees their
benefits Monday that three years of free credit
monitoring is not enough.

“Forget the three years. We need lifetime
monitoring,” retiree Sandy Richards told the State
Employee Benefits Committee.

“Three years is nothing,” said Richards, who retired
from the Delaware Psychiatric Center and is
president of the Delaware retiree chapter of the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees.

“Social Security is the most valuable number you
have. Why do you need our Social Security numbers
anyway?” he asked.

Richards was one of about a dozen retirees who
packed a meeting room in the Tatnall Building to
voice their displeasure at the fact that their Social
Security numbers, gender and date of birth — but
not their names — had been posted on the state’s
procurement website from Aug. 16 to Aug. 20.

The Office of Management and Budget posted the
information as part of a request from Aon
Consulting, the state’s benefits manager, for
proposals from insurers interested in offering
vision coverage to retirees. Aon inadvertently
included the sensitive data in the request’s final
draft.

Richard A. Phillips, president of the Delaware State
Education Association’s retirees, said he has fielded
calls from members, “many in their 70s, 80s and
90s, with fear in their voices.”

He said some of them have told him, “I feel so
violated.”

Aon Consulting initially had offered the retirees one
year of free credit monitoring through Experian, one
of the three national credit bureaus. After an outcry
from the pensioners and requests from the state,
Aon sweetened the deal and extended it to three
years.

Noting that retirees who wish to continue the credit
monitoring beyond three years will have to pay
$49.95 a year to do so, Richards said the state
should press Aon for a better deal.

“Please, work with AON” to get lifetime monitoring
for all 22,193 retirees, Phillips said.

OMB Director Ann Visalli, who chairs the benefits
committee, made no promises to the retirees.

Her immediate priority, she said, is getting more
retirees to sign up for the free monitoring.

Thus far, only 11,819 have signed up, according to
Brenda Lakeman, director of statewide benefits.

Aon Consulting has fielded 5,396 calls related to
the data breach, Lakeman said, and the state
pension office received 1,574 calls.

Visalli said after the meeting that OMB will send out
another letter to the retirees, reminding them of
Aon’s offer and urging them to sign up.

OMB also is working with security experts Stroz
Friedberg LLC, headed by former FBI agent Edward
M. Stroz, to assess the danger that the information
fell into the wrong hands and to make

recommendations on how to prevent similar
breaches.

The knowledge that any number of state agencies
have their Social Security numbers and could be
providing them to third parties like Aon also was on
the pensioners’ minds.

Several said the state should not use the numbers at
all, substituting them with an employee number
instead.

When retired educator Wayne Emsley asked how
many third parties have been given his Social
Security number, and why the state couldn’t use an
employee ID number instead, Visalli said her
priority is getting the retirees signed up for credit
monitoring, and that the state is reviewing its
internal practices.

“I don’t feel that you’ve answered either of my
questions,” Emsley said.

Retired teacher Mary Wallace said the state “should
be bending over backward” to help the pensioners
and that it should stop using their Social Security
numbers.

“You have a responsibility to the citizens, and any
elected office has a responsibility to get this
practice stopped,” Wallace said.

If they don’t, she added, “Then elected officials
might not be elected again.”

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