14 DAY TRIAL // Monster Worldwide was alerted by one of its former employees that a Google search revealed a spreadsheet containing sensitive information on some of their staff members.
DataBreaches informs on a letter sent by the company to the New Hampshire Attorney General's office in which the online employment solutions provider acknowledges that a document containing private data on 13 of their former employees was found published on the internet.
“The spreadsheet appears to have been created in March 2003, but it is unknown when this information first appeared online,” the letter reads.
After googling her name, the ex-staff member came across the file on the second page of results, published on the personal website of another former employee that left the company in 2007.
A further investigation revealed that the latter had no idea on the online presence of the spreadsheet and even claimed that the existence of the file was unknown to him.
Names, job titles, social security numbers, addresses, birth dates, salaries and termination dates were all listed and published for anyone to take.
“At Monster's request, Google removed its cached copy of the spreadsheet and by October 35th it was no longer appearing in Google search result. Monster's investigation determined that the file did not appear in search results for other major search engines, including Bing, Yahoo, AOL, and Ask.”
All the individuals involved in the unfortunate incident are being notified by the company that will offer them a one-year credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to make sure their assets are secure.
On the positive side of things, the firm took all the necessary steps to make sure the problem doesn't get out of hand. On the other hand, 8 years is a long period and anyone could have accessed the valuable data, which can translate to gold in the hands of identity thieves.