{"id":73953,"date":"2017-08-12T10:26:55","date_gmt":"2017-08-12T14:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=73953"},"modified":"2017-08-12T10:30:06","modified_gmt":"2017-08-12T14:30:06","slug":"vva-sues-pentagon-for-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=73953","title":{"rendered":"VVA sues Pentagon for website"},"content":{"rendered":"

AnotherPat sends us a link to the Miami Herald<\/a> that reports the Vietnam Veterans of America is suing the Pentagon for their Servicemember Civil Relief Act website<\/a> complaining that scammers are using the website to gather “private details” of military veterans they can use to gain your confidence and phish for other personally identifying information.<\/p>\n

Thomas Barden, a veteran of the Vietnam War who served in the U.S. Air Force for 21 years, found that out firsthand.<\/p>\n

The plaintiff in the suit received a call from someone supposedly affiliated with Microsoft in March 2016. Since the caller knew all kinds of personal details about Barden\u2019s military service, Barden thought he was authorized by the government. The scammer convinced him his computer was at risk, and sold him firewall software to protect it. Nine months later, the scammer gained remote access to the computer, locked him out, and threatened to hold his files for ransom unless he paid up.<\/p>\n

Worried about data theft, Barden broke the hard drive into pieces and was so concerned about his privacy that he threw them into different trash cans over several days. Since then, he has continued to receive harassing phone calls from the same scammers, causing him \u201csignificant anxiety and stress,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First of all if the government wants something from you, they don’t call you on the phone – they send you a letter. Secondly, most Vietnam veterans aren’t even in the system – only if they had service after 1985. You can click on the link and see for yourself if you’re in the system. You’ll need a complete name, a birthday and dates of service after 1985. The only “private details” information you’ll get from an inquiry is time you spent on active duty and the branch of service – hardly startling information.<\/p>\n

Here’s the screen where I entered my information; <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

And the resulting “private details”;<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

BFD. Big Whoop. Now you know that I served in the Army for 19 years. I think that’s common knowledge.<\/p>\n

\u201cVeterans are disproportionately targeted by scammers and identity thieves,\u201d Vietnam Veterans of America President John Rowan said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon \u201cis fueling the problem by leaving veterans\u2019 private information easily accessible on the internet (and) has refused to properly secure veterans\u2019 information,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are asking a court to order them to do so.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s just ridiculous. We use the website to check on people whose records we get back from the NPRC as “no records available” – we’ve saved ourselves some embarrassment more than a few times.<\/p>\n

The bigger problem the VVA should be addressing is Veterans Affairs employees who release PII to unauthorized people. I’ve had that happen more than once. There’s a certain radio show host who had one of his guests get in my VA records and he thinks it’s funny to broadcast my social security number on his radio program – the VA OIG is working on that one.<\/p>\n

But this bluster about the SCRA website is a tempest in a teapot. The VVA would do better clearing out the pretenders among their membership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AnotherPat sends us a link to the Miami Herald that reports the Vietnam Veterans of America … VVA sues Pentagon for website<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}