BP Loses Laptop With Oil-Spill Claimants' Personal Info

Oxford_Comma_Lover writes "CNN Reports that BP lost a laptop with the name, address, DOB, and SSNs of everyone who filed claims related to the big oil spill last year. In other words, everyone asking for money from them based on the spill just got their private info misplaced. There has been no allegation of bad faith."

Comments

Re:oh,

[PsychoSlashDot]

How about an additional answer: consider well what data you carry on a mobile device.

I have serious difficulty figuring out what scenario was in play that required this particular data to be on a laptop in the first place. Some mobile sales guy needed the data to plug in at a hotel conference room and make a presentation? Some jet-setting bigwig needed to massage the data and do some data-mining while on a trans-oceanic flight?

Even if the laptop's user was tasked with "visit each of these people individually and tell them 'no' in plain English", the data should have been partial and redacted.

Sorry, but corporations - like the human beings they're comprised of - put data on theft-prone devices that shouldn't be there in the first place. Encrypted or not.

Re:oh,

[mwvdlee]

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

With such enormous levels of stupidity, the entire company should just be shut down and the entire management thrown into a mental hospital.