« RISD's outgoing Mandle to move on to Qatar | Today | Court papers spell out tentative Station fire payments »

March 21, 2008

Update: Disk with some state personnel info missing

A computer disk with the Social Security numbers of about 1,250 state workers and another 150 state job applicants is missing from the state Department of Administration.

Administration officials believe the disk disappeared on March 13 while department workers were transferring information files from a computer in Providence to one in an office in Cranston, said Melanie Marcaccio, deputy personal administrator in the Department of Administration.

The state police have been helping search for the disk since it went lost but there is "absolutely no evidence that the disk has been acquired by an unauthorized part or that the information has been misused,’’ the department said in a statement today.

On Thursday, administration officials sent precautionary letters to the 1,393 people whose Social Security numbers were on the disk. The department recommended they all place a fraud alert on their credit files and obtain copies of their credit report.

The 1,250 or so state workers were all employed by the Department of Children, Youth and Families and were on this particular list of employees because they were receiving some kind of payroll adjustment, such as overtime, said Marcaccio. The other 150 people were DCYF job applicants.

"We deeply regret any inconvenience or concern that this incident has caused affected individuals, the administration department said in its statement. "Once we decided it was unlikely we would be able to locate the missing computer disk, we wanted to inform the individuals directly by mail and also through the media so they could take the proper precautions.’’

-- Journal staff writer Tom Mooney

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Comments

Post a comment

Please be civil. Vicious comments, personal attacks and profanity won't be published. Name and email are required; email address will not publish.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)