Nearly 5,000 people who filed for unemployment with the Georgia Department of Labor may have had their personal information compromised after an employee inadvertently sent out an email containing the data.
How many victims? 4,457.
What type of personal information? Names, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers and email addresses.
What happened? A Georgia Department of Labor employee inadvertently sent an email containing a spreadsheet to roughly 1,000 people. The spreadsheet contained the personal information.
What was the response? The Georgia Department of Labor notified recipients of the letter that an error was made and asked those people to delete the email without opening the attachment. The state department also notified those listed in the spreadsheet via letter and is offering them free credit monitoring services.
Details: Recipients of the email said it arrived on Sept. 5 at about 4 p.m.
Quote: “The email occurred because of an employee error,” said a Georgia Department of Labor spokesperson. “The department has notified recipients of the error and instructed them to immediately delete the file attached to the email without opening it.”
Source: 11alive.com, 11Alive News, “Email with thousands of SSN's sent to Dept. of Labor customers,” Sept. 6, 2013.
