Ameriprise: Laptop Stolen With Data on 158,000 Clients
Does anybody else see a problem with companies leaving financial data for thousands of people sitting in locked cars whose windows can easily be broken? Am I missing something or are these people brain dead?
Quote:
Ameriprise: Laptop Stolen With Data on 158,000 Clients Wednesday, January 25, 2006
CHICAGO"”Ameriprise Financial Inc. (AMP) said Wednesday it has notified about 226,000 people that their names and other personal data were stored on a laptop computer that was stolen from an employee's vehicle.
Ameriprise said it has alerted 68,000 current and former financial advisers whose names and Social Security numbers were also stored on the same computer. About 158,000 clients had only their names and internal account numbers exposed. The company says it has more than 2 million customers and about 10,500 current financial advisers.
Minneapolis-based Ameriprise said it had received no reports that the data lost in the theft had been used improperly. Ameriprise is the name of the former American Express Financial Advisors division, which New York-based American Express Co. spun off last fall.
Ameriprise said the theft appeared to be a "random criminal act" and that it has been working with law enforcement to recover the laptop, which it said was stolen recently from an employee's locked vehicle that was parked offsite.
Company spokesman Steve Connolly said the laptop was stolen in late December outside Minnesota, but he declined to say where.
"We don't want to pinpoint the location because we don't want to compromise the ongoing investigation," Connolly said.
RE: Ameriprise: Laptop Stolen With Data on 158,000 Clients
Laptop theft is very common and a common way of doing things such as corporate spieing. There are products to protect this, things from REAL security to get onto the system to full on disk encryption and several layers in between.
What you describe is reality, its going to happen.
Simple things can be done to prevent it in addition to whats above, USB controlled removable drives can even be used as the storage device, then just stick it in your pocket.
Ameriprise: Laptop Stolen With Data on 158,000 Clients
