Laptop with (196,000) Hewlett-Packard employees' ID stolen

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/14162732.htm

By Nicole C. Wong
Mercury News
A laptop computer containing the names, Social Security numbers, compensation and other information for 196,000 current and former Hewlett-Packard employees was stolen a week ago, HP confirmed Wednesday.

The employees were all participants in HP's company-sponsored retirement plans administered by Fidelity Investments. Fidelity sent e-mails and letters overnight Tuesday to the retirement plan participants notifying them that the Fidelity laptop had been swiped.

... John Dunse, an engineer who retired after working 30 years for HP and then its spin-off Agilent, received a letter from Fidelity delivered Wednesday by the United Parcel Service.

``The one thing I can't figure out is why these companies keep this sensitive information on laptops,'' said the 64-year-old San Jose man. ``It's ridiculous. It's going to cost them a pile of money.''

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In my opinion, companies are being paid to "lose" this information. This has happened too many times for it to be sheer coincidence.

Some umbrella organization (a company or a government sector) is gathering sensitive information on people, and they're doing it through these mishaps.

Tinfoilish, I know. However, I think it's entirely possible.

Nothing "tinfoilish" about it.

I see no rush in Congress to address it, either.

:tinfoilhat:

Stupid people with laptops will do this sort of thing.

create a mini drive to encrypt. Duh...

Stolen Fidelity computer raises privacy fears
Laptop contained sensitive data on nearly 200,000 retirement accounts

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11974062/

BOSTON - A laptop belonging to Fidelity Investments that held the names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers and other information of 196,000 retirement account customers was stolen last week, the company says.

The nation's largest mutual fund manager said Wednesday that the computer held information on participants in Hewlett-Packard Co.'s pension and 401(k) plans and that it is has alerted those affected, offering them free credit monitoring for 12 months. Fidelity said there is no evidence that the data has been misused.

Fidelity, the sole provider of Hewlett-Packard's defined benefit and defined contribution plans, said it would reimburse account holders for any losses linked to unauthorized transactions connected to the stolen laptop.

The company also has notified the top three credit reporting agencies and implemented additional authentication procedures to gain account access. Fidelity did not say where the laptop was stolen, only that it was taken on March 15.

need to have that much information??

...followed by the words "inside job."

:patriot:

someone high up in the gubmint, but why? Wouldn't they already have access to all this info anyhow? Someone is trying to build a database and the people need to figure out who it is and why.

Fidelity was just sued itself for improperly obtaining 565,600 names and addresses from the Florida motor vehicles department from 2000-2003. I think there's something funny going on here.

http://www.epic.org/privacy/drivers/kehoe.html

I had dealt with (they wouldn't say who) had its computer hacked and debit-card information taken. So they replaced the Visa debit cards (and gave new PIN's, of course) of all their customers who paid that merchant with a Visa card.

If not, why not?

by Fidelity. And my guess is that Fidelity won't persue this at all. Though they won't tell us when or where the laptop was stolen, it was apparantly lost shortly after a business meeting. I wonder who that meeting was with?

"It is unusual to have so much information on one laptop, Fidelity spokeswoman Anne Crowley said, but the computer in question was brought to a business meeting by a team of employees."

In the Kehoe case, (linked above), Fidelity bought 500,000 names from the Florida DMV in order to use them for junk mail purposes. I don't think a company like this would think twice about re-selling their own information for a nice profit. I wonder what's in these retirement account records?

Asked for legislation to keep sensitive info like this out of laptops, confine it to desktop computers. The woman who took my call acted uninterested, but maybe if enough people call their reps something will be done about this. Doesn't seem like financial info like that needs to be portable. And this happens waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too often.