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<b>Technology News:</b> Big US firms dogged by laptop thefts. By John Stokdyk

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7th Mar 2006
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Big Four accountants Ernst & Young and Deloitte were embarrassed in the US recently when a series of laptop thefts were highlighted in news reports.

In February, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Ernst & Young had written to a group of clients whose Social Security numbers had been stored on a laptop that was stolen from an employee's car.

Around 9,000 employees of security software firm McAfee also had their personal details compromised when a Deloitte employee left the data behind in an airline seat pouch on an unencrypted CD-ROM.

The two episodes came to light as a result of a California state security breach law that requires organisations to inform individuals when their personal information may have been compromised. In the Ernst & Young case, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy was one of the people affected and spoke about the episode at a public conference.

In Florida, a group of Ernst & Young auditors working at a client's office were caught out when they went to lunch, the Miami Herald reported. They left their Dell laptops behind as they went for lunch at 12:47pm. The room had a self-locking mechanism, but within a minute of the auditors leaving, thieves walked into the room and left shortly after with $8,000 worth of computer in a backpack.

The widespread use of portable computers greatly increases opportunities for thefts of both hardware and data that can be used for identity fraud. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse offers tips for people on to deal with any breaches. It added that many of the breaches occur when data is being backed up or transported to offsite storage. One way to prevent access to sensitive information was to ensure it was encrypted, the organisation said.

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