JAPAN COMPUTER CONTAINING DATA ON 307,000 PEOPLE STOLEN FROM COMPANY DORMITORYDaily Yomiuri On-LinePC stolen with data on 307,000 people

The Yomiuri Shimbun

A notebook computer containing personal information on 307,000 people has been stolen from a company dormitory in Itami, Hyogo Prefecture, an Osaka municipal government official said Monday.

The computer included information on donors to the construction of a tower at the Flower Expo Memorial Park in Tsurumi Ward, Osaka. The data leakage is thought to be the largest since the Personal Information Protection Law took effect in April.

According to the municipal government, an employee of Mitsubishi Electric Control Software Corp., which was contracted to digitalize the data, copied the data onto his personal computer to work on it at home, and it was stolen from the company's dormitory on June 13.

The data included people's names, addresses and other information. The municipal government said it was unlikely to be misused, however, as a 16-digit password must be inputted to access the data.