IRS Loses Laptop With Personal Information for 291 People

The IRS has announced that an employee lost anand advised as to identy theft precautions.The
agency laptop early last month that containeddepartment of Veterans Affairs suffered a much
personal information for 291 workers and joblarger data loss last month when thieves stole a
applicants.The employee apparently checked thelaptop and hard drive from a VA data analyst's
laptop as luggage aboard a commercial flight whilehome that contained personal information for 26.5
traveling to a job fair and never saw it again,million veterans and active military members.IRS
according to Terry L. Lemons of the IRS.Theemployees are worried, according to Colleen M.
computer contained unencrypted names, birthKelley, president of the National Treasury
dates, Social Security numbers and fingerprints forEmployees Union."The first thing that comes to
both employees and applicants. Onlymind is identity theft and why care and caution
approximately 100 of the people on the computerwasn't taken to encrypt their data," she said.
were IRS employees.Lemons says that the"They are taking this seriously and I would expect
computer held no tax return information."The datato see some changes in policy and procedures in
was not encrypted, but it was protected by athe future."Martin Lukac ( represents and a
double-password system," he explained. "To getfinance web-company specializing in real estate
into this personal data on there, you would havemortgage market. We specialize in daily updates,
to have two separate passwords."The Treasuryrate predictions, mortgage rates and more. Find
Department's inspector general for taxlow home loan mortgage interest rates from
administration is investigating the loss, according tohundreds of mortgage companies!
the IRS. All affected individuals are being notified