Stolen unencrypted hard drives containing the information of 29 thousand Facebook employees
They were stolen from an employee’s car. The reason why he had them with him is unknown.
The banking information of 29 thousand Facebook employees, stored on unencrypted hard drives, was stolen from the car of an employee of the company. The hard drives contain information regarding the company’s US employees and include bank account numbers, names, the last four digits of the social security number, wage information, bonuses, and equity securities. Facebook employees were notified of the theft on Friday morning.
The fact also dates back to November 17, an internal email shows that the company only realized on November 20 that the hard drives were missing from the appeal and on November 29 it confirmed that the stolen material concerned personal data of the employees.
Facebook is currently working with law enforcement agencies to recover hard drives and has offered employees affected by the incident to sign up for an identity theft service for two years.
The stolen material does not contain any information regarding users of the social network, but the episode generates further concerns about the lack of attention and care that a giant like Facebook uses when it comes to managing data and personal information.
Among other things, it is not clear why the hard drives had been transported because the employee should not have taken them out of their office. Not to mention the lack of encryption on storage media that contain private data.
” We have no evidence that the data has been exploited, and we believe this is a simple theft and not an attempt to voluntarily steal employee information, ” said Facebook through a spokesman.
