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GE Loses Laptop Left in Hotel Room

50,000 Employees & Retirees Records at Risk

September 27, 2006

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Industrial giant General Electric's current corporate motto is "imagination at work." Now the company's imagination will be working overtime to find a missing laptop containing data on 50,000 current and former employees.

GE reported on Sept. 26th that the laptop containing the data had been stolen from an employee's locked hotel room.

The company did not provide any information regarding whether the laptop was password-protected, or why the unidentified employee had the data on his computer in the first place.

GE spokesman Russell Wilkerson made the usual claims regarding the theft -- that the laptop was stolen for its own value, rather than for the data contained on it, and that there was no sign that the data had been used improperly.

The company is notifying employees via mail if they were affected, and is setting up free credit monitoring and insurance against identity theft.

One irate former GE employee complained to the Albany Times-Union about the theft. "Why do you need 50,000 names and Social Security numbers?" he asked. "Why is this person even carrying this information around? What are you doing with it?"

Good Question

The unidentified GE retiree's question has been echoed many times by victims of data breaches caused by laptop or equipment theft.

Stolen or lost computer equipment containing vital personal records has been a major contributor to the nearly 94 million American consumer records exposed to potential identity theft.

Recent instances of disappearing laptops include the theft of a laptop from the Miami offices of the Department of Transportation, containing records that were being used in an ongoing fraud investigation.

Washington state mental health care provider Compass Health recently suffered the theft of a laptop containing the Social Security numbers and medical information on an unspecified number of patients in its care. The company discovered the theft in June 2006, but waited two months to report it.

Last month the Philadelphia-based bank Sovereign Bancorp informed customers that three laptops containing "thousands" of customer records had been stolen from employees' locked cars in Massachusetts.

The bank declined to identify how many customers were affected in specific, but said it would set up new accounts for any customer caught in the breach.

Congressman Tom Davis (R-Va.) introduced a bill that would ostensibly provide better policies for government agencies to prevent data theft, but the bill was criticized for offering little in the way of actual solutions.

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