A news radio station in Chicago, IL has reported that the personal information of over 60,000 people has been stolen. A laptop computer that contains this information was stolen from an employee of a company that handles billing for the Chicago Fire Department ambulance transportation service. The revenue department in Chicago has noted that anyone who has been transported via one of the city’s fire department ambulances, should be concerned about this theft.

The company that does the billing for the fire department is called DeZonia and this theft is said to have happened two months ago when an employees car was broken into. DeZonia has mailed letters to over 60,000 people who might be affected in order to warn them of the incident. The file on the stolen laptop is encrypted and password protected, however there is still need to take caution.

One of those who received a letter told the media that she wondered if the letter was a scam to get her personal information, however, these letters are real and victims need to be sure to check their credit and take precautions.

A spokesman for the Chicago Revenue Department stated: “We do know that it’s inconvenient, obviously, and we’ve expressed our dissatisfaction to our vendor.”

DeZonia will pay for one year of credit monitoring for those affected. We also suggest LifeLock as an option for identity theft protection service. Promotion code Defense can be used on the enrollment form for a deep discount off of the regular price.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 7:32 am and is filed under Data Breach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.