A company laptop containing the personal information of about 159,000 Administaff employees was stolen from a company employee.

What types of personal information? Names, addresses and Social Security numbers.

What was the response? The company has notified all affected employees and former employees, and will offer one year of free credit-monitoring service.

Administaff has set up toll-free number and website for victims.

Details: The company believes the theft was random and did not specifically target the laptop’s information.

An employee had taken the laptop home and stopped to go grocery shopping. On Oct. 3, the next day, the laptop was no longer in his car.

The laptop is password-protected, but the personal information was not saved in an encrypted location – a violation of company policy.

96,000 of the victims are former employees, while 63,000 still work at Administaff.

Source: Chron.com (Houston Chronicle), Oct. 15, “Laptop goes missing with data on workers”