Charlotte City Workers' SSNs Exposed

A consulting firm working for the city of Charlotte, N.C., has lost two DVDs that contained the Social Security numbers and other personal and medical information for about 5,200 current and former city workers.

The DVDs were part of a mailed shipment sent Feb. 2 from the Charlotte office of Towers Watson, a human resources consulting firm, to its office in Atlanta. When the shipment arrived the next day, the company realized the DVDs were missing, according to a report in the Charlotte Observer.

Included on the DVDs was information for city employees who were receiving city health coverage in early 2002, Charlotte city officials said.

At that time, employees' and elected officials' Social Security numbers were used as an identification system for health insurance.

"That was the industry standard at the time," the city spokesman Keith Richardson told the Observer. "But that is no longer the way information is kept."

Richardson said the files on the DVDs were not encrypted, a violation of Towers Watson's own policies. The company began a search for the DVDs and notified the Charlotte city officials on Feb. 23 of the loss, according to the newspaper. City officials said the city and Towers Watson have worked since then to determine which current or former employees and elected officials might have been affected.

Because the lost information might be subject to protection under state and federal laws, the city has notified affected individuals, the North Carolina attorney general’s office and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As of yet, there is no indication any person’s information had been used illegally by anyone, officials said.

Towers Watson has told those affected by the data loss that it will provide two years of free identity theft monitoring.