Consumers could be forgiven for feeling they're fighting identity theft with one arm tied behind their back. Fast fooders McDonalds just announced the recall of thousands of MP3 players from the Japanese market when it was discovered that as many as 10,000 customer computers were infected with a password-grabbing spyware Trojan pre-loaded on the player.

Turns out the spyware probably made its way on to the players because of sloppy security at the manufacturers. And it also turns out that McDonalds is not alone. In 2005 hard drive maker I-O systems had to recall hard drives contaminated with the Tompai-A worm, and as far back as 2001 HP was accused of distributing multiple viruses packaged with its printer drivers. And just a couple of months ago a security expert I work with discovered that the recovery CD he received from Gateway Computers to help recover his virus infected computer was itself contaminated with multiple viruses.

Surprised? You shouldn't be. Sloppy security practices by big companies continue to create some of the biggest security incidents, yet most of these companies skate through unscathed while we all lose a little more confidence in the brands we're expected to trust.