This is an excerpt from this morning’s Wall Street Journal. Comments in square brackets are mine.
A [company] laptop containing the names and Social Security numbers of [an equivalent to the population of Miami, FL] workers and retirees has been stolen, putting the employees at risk for identity theft and credit-card fraud. The theft was the third such offense in the past thirteen months.
[representative] said no proprietary, customer or supplier data was on the computer. Files on the computer also contained home addresses, phone numbers and birth dates. Some of the files listed salary information.
[Last fall], another laptop containing information on roughly [the population of Huntsville, AL] current and former employees was stolen. In [the spring], a laptop containing information on [a relatively smaller, but still large number of] employees and retirees was stolen.
The obvious question is unanswered: why is the employee personal data still being stored on laptops?