Scott's View: Breaking News on Veterans Privacy

As you may know, Veterans Advantage is a longtime advocate of privacy protection for those of us who have served. We continue to hear of our increased risk as a group when compared to the general population, and this is an area that needs more focus from our legislators and veterans service organizations to enhance military identity protections.

In this week's breaking news, we are glad to see some movement on this front, as Vietnam Veterans of America has filed a lawsuit against the DoD as having failed to protect a critical military database.

According to the complaint, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act site, managed by the DoD, exposes sensitive private details about the military service of millions of veterans. By failing to impose access permissions, the DoD site is open to anyone to use, and violates our veterans' rights under the Privacy Act. We become more vulnerable to identity theft as scammers can use the data to perpetrate identity theft, impostor scams, and other frauds

We'll keep you posted as the litigation continues. More here (PDF). 

Finally, in today's newsletter edition, we highlight for our family members great back-to-school savings - such as a Verizon Wireless plan or Dell computer - as well more travel options from Day's Inn and Avis for those of you still planning end of summer travel.