Roughly 15,000 active, retired, former, and deceased New York City transit workers may have personal information – including Social Security numbers – at risk after the unencrypted data was discovered on a CD inside a refurbished CD drive.
How many victims? Roughly 15,000.
What type of personal information? Names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, earnings information and other data.
What happened? A CD containing the information was discovered inside a refurbished CD drive sold by a retailer.
What was the response? An investigation is ongoing to determine the cause of the breach.
Details: The Associated Press obtained a letter from Sidney Gellineau, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) chief information officer, dated March 6. Putting unencrypted information on a CD is a violation of MTA policy.
Quote: “While we do not suspect nor have seen any evidence of misuse of the data, every precaution is being taken to ensure that this is the case,” Gellineau wrote in the letter.
Source: bigstory.ap.org, “15K NYC transit workers have personal info exposed,” March 13, 2014.
