Employees at Facebook could be in jeopardy of having their identities stolen. An employee within the payroll department had their vehicle broken into and the thief walked away with unencrypted hard drives, according to Bloomberg. It appears that somewhere around 29,000 employees in the United States are at risk.
The hard drives contain personal information such as names, bank accounts, and the last four digits of social security numbers. Additionally, employee profiles with salaries, bonuses, and equity stipulations are included. All payroll data on the hard drives belong to employees who were with Facebook in 2018.
Facebook suggests the thief had no idea hard drives were inside the vehicle, but it's unknown if the items will be turned over to hackers capable of extracting data.
"We worked with law enforcement as they investigated a recent car break-in and theft of an employee's bag containing company equipment with employee payroll information stored on it," a Facebook spokesperson told CNET. "We have seen no evidence of abuse and believe this was a smash-and-grab crime rather than an attempt to steal employee information."
Three days after the vehicle break-in, Facebook discovered the hard drives were no longer on its premises. It concluded a forensic investigation on November 29 to identify the amount of personal information at risk. Facebook alerted affected employees on December 13.
In the aftermath of this incident, Facebook took "disciplinary action" on the employee who left its office with the hard drives. Facebook did not discuss whether the employee has been suspended or fired. The Menlo Park-based company has continued working with law enforcement to locate the hard drives and recover all personal information on them. Currently, employees are being told to notify their banks of the incident.
Facebook also says it'll pay for two years of an identity theft monitoring service. Personal information doesn't appear to be the target by the perpetrator(s), but employees still need to take appropriate measures in an effort to protect their identities and financial accounts.
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