June 26, 2012

Cleveland nonprofit employment agency loses SSNs on 26k

Tens of thousands of job-seekers are at risk after a laptop belonging to a nonprofit employment agency was stolen.

How many victims? Roughly 26,000 low-income and disadvantaged residents in the Cleveland area who provided data to the Towards Employment anytime before May 11.

What type of personal information? Names, addresses and Social Security numbers.

What happened?  A thief stole the laptop from Towards' offices.

Details: The machine was password protected, but that control could be bypassed, the company said. Since the incident, Towards is no longer collecting Social Security numbers from its clients.

Source: Cleveland.com, The Plain Dealer, "Towards Employment warns clients of data breach, possible identity theft," June 25, 2012.

[An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the number of victims was 100,000, when it was actually a roughly 26,000. One hundred thousand is the total number of clients that the agency has served over the past 36 years].

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