250,000 Hotels.com customers woke up to super great news Friday morning: “Um, sorry guys, all your credit card numbers were stolen.”

It’s standard boiler plate for corporate laptop theft predicated by gross incompetence. Hotels.com hired Ernst & Young to audit their books. Ernst & Young auditor, for whatever incredible reason, left the building with an unencrypted laptop containing the credit card numbers of every known Hotels.com customer. The laptop was then (surprise!) stolen.

As usual for this type of story, there was a huge delay between the date the laptop theft occurred (early February) and when customers were notified (last week of May).

I think we are rapidly drawing close to the point when it would simply be easier to hand your credit card number to a Russian hacker directly, as opposed to waiting for a company to accidentally give it to them. At least then you’re cutting out the middle man.

Hotels.com Customer Data Stolen [Yahoo! News]

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.