Fergie's Tech Blog

FTC Laptop Theft Exposes Consumer Data

...and the beat goes on. Unbelievable.

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

The Federal Trade Commission -- an agency whose mission includes consumer protection and occasionally involves suing companies for negligence in protecting customer information -- today disclosed a recent theft of two laptop computers containing personal and financial data on consumers.

In a statement, the FTC said two employee laptops were stolen from a locked vehicle. The PCs contained data on about 110 people that was "gathered in law enforcement investigations and included, variously, names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and in some instances, financial account numbers."

The commission said it has "no reason to believe the information on the laptops, as opposed to the laptops themselves, was the target of the theft. In addition, the stolen laptops were password protected and the personal information was a very small part of several thousand files contained in one of the laptops." The agency also said it would offer affected individuals one year of free credit monitoring.

posted by Fergie @ 6/22/2006 09:37:00 AM