29,000 Facebook Employees Have Their Banking Information Compromised by Theft
A thief swiped a bag from a Facebook employee’s vehicle in November that contained private information of more than 30,000 of the tech company’s employees, Bloomberg reported Friday.
The stolen hard drives included the bank account numbers and portions of employees’ social security numbers, among other highly private information, Facebook told staff members Friday, according to Bloomberg.
The employee who was robbed did not have the authority to carry the hard drives out of the office.
“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 spokeswoman said, according to Bloomberg.
“We have seen no evidence of abuse and believe this was a smash and grab crime rather than an attempt to steal employee information.”
The records were stolen on Nov. 17 but Facebook didn’t realize they were gone until Nov. 20, Bloomberg reported, citing Facebook’s internal emails.
Investigators confirmed nine days later, on Nov. 29, that the hard drives contain payroll information for 29,000 employees who worked with the company in 2018.
Facebook has not responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Facebook has wrestled with accusations in the past pertaining to its handling of customer’s private information.
Reports in June, for instance, suggest Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was aware of some potential abuses of private data.
Zuckerberg raised issues with a third-party app that was capable of accessing Facebook users’ information regardless of their privacy settings and was thus aware there was a problem, The Wall Street Journal reported in June.
The company “uncovered emails” that would show he knew of “problematic privacy practices,” the report noted.
The representative added, “We have fully cooperated with the FTC’s investigation to date and provided tens of thousands of documents, emails and files.”
Facebook’s denial came after the company began geared up as federal officials imposed massive fines related to the social media giant’s handling of users’ private data ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
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