A consumer rights advocacy group, the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), has published its yearly report for 2007. They have calculated that about 127 million people have been exposed in 446 breaches over the last year. The 136-page report details each of the known breaches and will still be updated weekly.

By comparison, their 2006 report lists 312 incidents potentially affecting more than 19 million individuals.

"More of them are experiencing data breaches, and they're responding to them in a reactive way, rather than proactively looking at the company's security and seeing where the holes might be," said to AP Linda Foley, who founded the Identity Theft Resource Center after becoming an identity theft victim herself.

More than half of those affected by data breaches in 2007 are so due to the TJX incident. The breach was first announced on January 17, 2007. However, the company discovered the breach in mid-December 2006, which affected credit card, debit card, check, and merchandise return transactions.

Personal information such as social security numbers and driver's license numbers from 451 thousand customers were also apparently downloaded by the intruders. The delay in announcing the breach was requested by law enforcement officials.

A banking group claimed in a court filing that the data breach at TJX affected about 65 million Visa account numbers and about 29 million MasterCard numbers, roughly twice that the company acknowledged earlier. Supporting their allegations, the banks cited sealed testimony taken from officials at the two largest credit card networks.

"A lot of breaches are due to inadequate information handling, such as laptop computers with Social Security numbers on them that are lost," Foley said to AP. "This is human error, and something that's completely avoidable, as opposed to a hacker breaking into your computer system."