A laptop stolen from Verity Trustees had much more data on it than it should have - including banking details.

Verity Trustees has had its wrist slapped by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) after a laptop was stolen containing data on 110,000 people.

The laptop was taken from the locked server room of Northgate Arinso, which supplies pension management software to Verity.

The laptop held names, addresses, salaries, national insurance numbers and dates of birth of 110,000 people, as well as 18,000 banking details.

The data wasn't supposed to be on the laptop, but had been downloaded for training - contrary to Northgate Arinso's normal policy of using anonymised data of 50 to 100 people.

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Forbes: The Year Of The Mega Data Breach

In 2009, a small number of data leaks exposed more personal information than ever before.

Glance at 2009's data breach statistics, and you might think the IT world had scored a rare win in the endless struggle against cybercrime.

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, government agencies and businesses reported 435 breaches as of Nov. 17, on track to show a 50% drop from the number of breaches reported in 2008. That would make 2009 the first year that the number of reported data breaches has dropped since 2005, when the ITRC started counting.

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80,000 Mailers Sent Out With Recipients' Social Security Numbers In Plain View

Check your mailbox. Thousands of Pennsylvanians could become victims of identity theft just because a piece of mail has been sent to their homes.

Right on the front of the piece of mail, in plain view, is the recipient's Social Security number. Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients may be at risk. Delores and Frank Ember, of Elizabethtown, simply could not believe what they found in their mailbox on Monday. Frank was the first to notice a problem with the postcards they received.

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Notre Dame security breach potentially affects employees

Notre Dame is warning university employees to keep an eye on their bank accounts after a security breach.

Personal information of some past and current employees - including name, social security number and birth date - was accidentally put onto a public website.

University spokesman Dennis Brown says the error was corrected and the information removed from the website.

In a letter to the employees affected, the university says there is nothing to indicate that the information was used inappropriately, but employees should have a credit check, just to be safe.

Brown could not say how many employees were affected.

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Employee data breach at MassMutual

Internetnews reports that the latest data breach to be discovered happened to MassMutual, a Massachussets-based insurance company. One of the company's employees databases was accessed by a (so far) unknown unauthorized individual.

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Personal info jeopardized after Workers' Comp Court computer hacked

The Nebraska State Patrol and FBI are trying to figure out who hacked into a Nebraska Workers' Compensation Court computer server -- and whether the hacker took personal information.

The state agency learned last week someone had broken into a server that temporarily held injury reports, said Glenn Morton, court administrator for the Workers' Compensation Court.

Personal information, including birth dates and Social Security numbers, would have been in the server, he said.

Whenever a worker has a job-related injury, a report is filed with the Workers' Compensation Court and the information temporarily stored on that server, Morton said.

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Personal details of E.On customers leaked

The personal details of 817 E.On customers have been disclosed in error.

E.On said it was trying to find out how it happened and was in the process of contacting all of those affected. It has apologised for the mistake.

The energy company said it had managed to speak to about half of those customers affected.

A customer from Coventry said she was sent bank account details, mobile phone numbers and the names and addresses of two people in Bradford and Nottingham.

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