As usual, the companies that we entrust to keep our computer security safe have proven to be barely capable of protecting their own employees from identity theft. In other words, McAfee has lost the personal information of 6,000 employees, including their names, addresses, stock options and Social Security numbers.

It was lost by one intrepid consultant, who burned all the information onto a compact disc, didn’t bother labeling it, then inserted it into an air seat pocket in front of him. Smooth. Then McAfee took close to three months to inform the employees.

Probably this is a non-issue. Some Virgin Atlantic janitor probably scooped it out of the seat pocket and tossed it into the garbage. But there has been a disturbing trend with companies losing highly confidential information lately, which implies that this is actually a regular occurrence – it’s just been picked up as a theme by news reporters. That this time it happened to a company that we expect to stringently look after our own informational security against Internet worms and viruses makes this sort of sloppy lapse even less forgivable.

As if you needed a better reason to switch to AVG. Which actually appears not to be free anymore. So fuck them too.

Link: Security Company McAfee Loses Employee Data at Consumer Affairs.

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