Stolen Laptop Stirs Identity Fears
Stolen Laptop Stirs Identity Fears
December 1, 2006: Another stolen laptop has raised fears of identity theft as data involving 38,000 Colorado patients is compromised.
This time, the laptop belonged to a Kaiser Permanente employee and the data involves Colorado patients of the Oakland, US hospital.
The theft reportedly took place in early October. Kaiser’s vice president of business operations, Jacque Montgomery, made the announcement this week, stating that the laptop was stolen for its ‘street value’ and not for the information stored on the device.
The data on the stolen laptop included personal information such as names, gender and medical records. Montgomery revealed in a written statement that no Social Security numbers were stored on the machine.
The information stored on the laptop related to an internal health review project, centering on two offices in the Colorado area.
Montgomery told reporters in the US that employees often take work home, but the employee who owned the stolen laptop no longer worked with the organisation.
In the last two years, Kaiser has faced public scrutiny and fines for events that have compromised patient data. In July this year, a similar incident occurred when a laptop containing 160,000 members was stolen from Kaiser offices in California. Last year, the organisation was fined by California’s Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) for creating a Web site that exposed the personal details of 150 individuals for almost four years.
Meanwhile, arrests have been made in the US over a US Department of Transportation laptop stolen in July. The laptop contained the details of 130,000 individuals including names, birthdates, addresses and social security numbers of drivers issued licences in Florida. However the laptop has still not been recovered.