Release of personal information

[Flipperf17]

I'm hoping I'm posting this in the correct forum. Today at my work one of the owners of the company sent an e-mail to all of the employees (several hundred employees) about signing up during open enrollment. Attached to the e-mail was an a standard excel spreadsheet that listed everyone's name, phone numbers, whether they signed up for insurance and which plan, as well as everyone's social security numbers...

I sent an owner a message informing him of the soc. numbers being listed on the attachment, to which he replied he was aware and thought it was just a standard daily report. Later he sent an e-mail saying the IT department deleted the file and e-mail attachment so no one could access it anymore and that it appeared it wasn't forwarded outside the company.

My concern is that I don't believe them when they say the eliminated the file, and that it didn't get out. I put a copy of the e-mails with the owner and the original e-mail (including the attachment) in my drafts folder and could still access it. Plus multiple people in the company have their e-mails forwarded either to their phones or even personal e-mails.

Is there anything that can be done about this?

 

[CdwJava]

What do you WANT done about it?

So far, it sounds as if the company took reasonable actions to remove the email and to prevent any further access to the information. If you are looking for a lawsuit heads to roll, there probably will not be any .. there may be some tongue-lashings and some people in hot water, but this sounds as if it was an error. If you are that concerned, ask the company if they might consider paying for you and other concerned employees to hire a credit monitoring service for the next year. Though, without birthdays or even addresses, the info would not be entirely sufficient to get credit in your name, but, it would be a good start.

Until some harm comes from their action, I don't think there's anything more you can do here.

 

[cbg]

What is it that you think should be done?

 

[Flipperf17]

My concern was more making sure I was covered if this information did get out as I am not confident it was contained.

Are there any steps I can take that might help me should this become a bigger issue? I guess that is a more accurate question. Would the company have to cover any damages from this or am I on my own should something happen?

 

[Zigner]

Sign up for credit report monitoring. It's dirt-cheap, and often free through various organizations that you may already belong to. It would be a wise thing to do even if this wouldn't have happened.