Murfreesboro, TN - When was the last time you used the Redbox kiosk? Yep, we have those DVD dispensing electronic devices here. Reports indicate that thousands of recently abandoned Redbox kiosks littered across the nation potentially represent the largest breach of personal data in our modern age.
Redbox LLC (Nasdaq "RDBX"), a neighborhood oriented, kiosk driven DVD rental company declared Chapter 7 Bankruptcy on July 11 this year, leaving behind millions of dollars of debt and unpaid employees.
The death of Redbox also abandoned thousands of their iconic, red retail DVD rental kiosks across America’s neighborhoods. Each forgotten kiosk contains their previous customer’s personal data... email addresses, membership information, credit and debit card numbers. Each abandoned kiosk represents an avenue for criminals to crack into the machines and gain access to customers' financial data.
"When Redbox went belly up, the company dissolved like an Alka-Seltzer in hot water... nothing left!" stated William James Boyd, the founder of DOMATER, a secure technology remediation and data destruction firm. "No company, no CEO, no managers, no employees, no money... everything’s gone!"
Everything except the DVD rental kiosks which house Personally Identifiable Data (PII) that criminals can use to break into customers' bank and credit accounts.
“No Redbox Company means no one will pick up and dispose of these eight-hundred-pound, metal monster data leaks" Boyd added. "And there's no one to go after to clean up this mess. The retailers where these kiosks are located don't know which way to turn. Those merchants aren't collecting rent on the space the kiosks occupy. In many cases those merchants are still paying the electricity bills to power the forgotten machines.”
"DOMATER is seeking an emergency court order to take possession of these neglected machines to rapidly get inside and destroy the hard drives. Those hard drives are what hold customers' banking information" Boyd warned. "Those hard drives are being targeted by thieves going after the financial data those hard drives carry."
