US GOOGLE STUNG BY DATA THEFT Google Stung by data theft - George’s Wonder Blog - My mostly tech-stuff blog:

Google Stung by data theft

ZDNet Australia recently reported on July 3, 2008 that Google has been effected by a recent theft at Colt Express Outsourcing Services on May 26th of this year - showing sadly that sometimes the big guys get stung, too. The theft of personal data of Google’s US employees hired prior to 2006 has been confirmed by Google. The theft effects an undisclosed number of employees and their dependents.

Unfortunately the data on computers recently stolen from Colt Express during this burglary reportedly were not encrypted. The information stolen includes names, birth dates, addresses and social security numbers and as ZDNet Autralia noted in their article this is “…all the information needed for a thief to open a credit card account under another’s name…”. Other clients of Colt Express, such as CBS’ CNET Networks, publisher of News.com were also effected.

Other details:

• Google itself was not burglarized
• Google’s internal systems were not compromised
• there was no evidence of misuse of the data (as of July 3)
• the stolen information could be used by identity thieves
• Google is offering to cover the costs of a year’s worth of credit monitoring and identity theft monitoring services
• CNET Networks is offering similar benefits to their employees
• Colt Express installed an alarm system four days after the theft
• Colt Express is going out of business