Gather round Columbia, we heard a harrowing tale from SSN breach survivor John Davisson. It seems the free credit monitoring service that your administration has provided is giving identity thieves one more shot to steal your personal information if they were busy from February 2007 to May 2008.

“I called Identity Guard to activate my Columbia-bought-and-paid-for “CREDITPROTECTX®” service. After I gave the operator some basic info, she said she’d transfer me to their ‘Identity Verification Unit.’ I waited on hold for a couple of minutes, until I was suddenly patched through to two or three simultaneous conversations between other customers and operators. All but one dropped out quickly, allowing me to overhear the voice of another CREDITPROTECTX® prospect. I couldn’t make out what the operator was telling her, but within a few seconds, the caller rattled off her full name, phone number, home address, email address, and social security number. Then the line when dead.

Sadly, I am not making this up.”

Oh, dear.