Aurion
16.07.08, 18:46
Google has confirmed that personal data of U.S. employees hired prior to 2006 have been stolen in a recent burglary.
Records kept at Colt Express Outsourcing Services, an external company Google and other companies use to handle human resources functions, were stolen in a burglary on May 26. An undisclosed number of employees' details and those of dependents such as names, addresses, and Social Security numbers were on the stolen computers. It is understood that Colt did not employ encryption to protect the information.
It's still unclear how many more of Colt Express' clients were affected by the breach. CBS' CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, was also affected by the burglary, with about 6,500 employees' details stolen.
Although there is no evidence of misuse of the data to date, the information obtained could be used by identity thieves to create fake accounts and identities.
It's only come to light now that Google was one of the companies affected. Google itself was not burglarized, nor were any of its internal systems compromised.
Danny Thorpe, former chief scientist at Borland and engineer at Google who now works for Microsoft, was informed of the theft on July 1.
Source :
Stolen: Google employees' personal data - CNET News.com (http://news.cnet.com/Stolen-Google-employees-personal-data/2100-1029_3-6243093.html?tag=cd.lede)
Records kept at Colt Express Outsourcing Services, an external company Google and other companies use to handle human resources functions, were stolen in a burglary on May 26. An undisclosed number of employees' details and those of dependents such as names, addresses, and Social Security numbers were on the stolen computers. It is understood that Colt did not employ encryption to protect the information.
It's still unclear how many more of Colt Express' clients were affected by the breach. CBS' CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, was also affected by the burglary, with about 6,500 employees' details stolen.
Although there is no evidence of misuse of the data to date, the information obtained could be used by identity thieves to create fake accounts and identities.
It's only come to light now that Google was one of the companies affected. Google itself was not burglarized, nor were any of its internal systems compromised.
Danny Thorpe, former chief scientist at Borland and engineer at Google who now works for Microsoft, was informed of the theft on July 1.
Source :
Stolen: Google employees' personal data - CNET News.com (http://news.cnet.com/Stolen-Google-employees-personal-data/2100-1029_3-6243093.html?tag=cd.lede)