Gap Inc. loses my name and social security number.
October 2, 2007 – 7:55 pmIf you're new here, I suggest you subscribe to my RSS feed. or bookmark this blog. You'll be able to easily keep up to date with new posts. Thanks for visiting!
Years ago during high school I applied for a job at Old Navy (which is owned by Gap). On the application I supplied various personal information including my name, address, social security number, etc. I received a letter earlier today informing my they lost a couple laptops with that information on it. I now get a measly 12 months of credit monitoring as compensation. I think I should get a couple years worth considering they lost about 800,000 applications… it might take them awhile to get through the list (and figure out who they want to identity theft).
Oh and by the way, I didn’t get hired for whatever reason.
This story has already hit various news publications - PC World, Consumer Affairs, Techspot, etc.
Gap blames this on a “third party vendor”… which begs the question, why was sensitive information being handled by someone else if they couldn’t guarantee the security of the data? Neither Gap nor Taleo (who runs the job site) will name the “third party”. They also found out about this incident September 19th, waited 10 days to announce it, and on a Friday too.
4 Responses to “Gap Inc. loses my name and social security number.”
what the f**k was sensitive data doing on a laptop?
why wasn’t it in an encrypted database?
& why did some 3rd party need data that was several years old?
By Adventures In Money Making on Oct 3, 2007
@ adventures
It just further goes to show you how reckless companies can be in handling sensitive data. This is why criminals run amuck with their credit card cloning and identity thefts.
By hejustlaughs on Oct 3, 2007
That’s horrible! I’d be so angry. Put a fraud alert on your credit report. I had an incident similar to that. Someone hacked into the university files and stole a bunch of names and social security numbers. Come to think of it….I was pretty pissed!
By Thrifty Penny on Oct 3, 2007