Starbucks Employees
Starbucks has recently reported an incident that has exposed 97,000 employees to the risk of having their identity stolen. A laptop that contained the employees’ personal information (including names, addresses and social security numbers) was stolen on Wednesday, October 29th. A memo to those affected can be found online at: Starbucksgossip.com. The memo shows that the Seattle police department have been notified and that there is no sign that this information has been misused.
Starbucks is also offering free services offered by Equifax for the next year and helpful tips from the FTC to help protect personal information from being used by the thief.
This is being reported as the second instance of a laptop being stolen with company information on it. The first was in November of 2006 and affected 60,000 current and former employees.
This time of year, everyone must be especially careful to protect their credit from being attacked due to identity thieves. With volumes of people shopping online and in stores with credit cards, identity thieves are in full force, ready to prey upon anyone who can easily be caught off guard. Keep in mind that even when shopping in stores and using credit, you must keep your PIN number protected and keep your card with you at all times. Do not leave a purse or wallet lying around for even a moment, that is all it takes.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 6:00 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.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Oh man, I love Starbucks. I can’t they lost all those identities like that. With that many people on the list, it must have been some corporate laptop. It always amazes me how many companies put our personal info on laptops then lose them. Even starbucks can apparently fall victim.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:43 pm
That’s really not uncommon at all. Just about everyone has their personal information stored in some laptop somewhere around the country. When an absent minded employee loses it or some robber breaks in and takes it, you can fall victim to identity theft. It’s that simple really.
That’s why lifelock is actually a really good deal. Lifelock assumes your personal information is already in the hands of identity thieves and constantly watches to stop them from using it to take your money. It’s well worth the money, especially if you use the lifelock promotion codes to get good deals.