But there is good news. According to officials at the Salvation Army, “We’re password protected and then we have two more layers of protection… Their information, I feel very confident that it’s secure. It’s very difficult to break into our systems that we’ve been using.”

Of course, the “password protection” part doesn’t inspire confidence, as usual. But multi-layered security? That’s a very good sign. Let’s hope it holds, indeed.

KENS 5 reports that arrests have been made, but no charges have been filed. Thanks to Redemtech for the tip.

Smith’s laptop, a MacBook Pro, was stolen while she stopped for a $3 hamburger.  In perhaps one mildly bright spot, she actually has a backup for most of the five years of research. However, she has none for the past six months, and those months were when the most important part of the research had occurred.

Whole life on the laptop, no backup, and no MyLaptopGPS. Every 12 seconds, another laptop stolen. Truly the most shocking part of this story is the lack of backup–one spilled coffee, one wrong drop of the machine, one slip and that data could have been gone. Of course people are not expected to be tech experts, but putting all your eggs in one single basket without even so much as a backup of the data is simply, stunningly, risky.

We should all be warned by this. Most folks won’t be–it will happen again. How about you?

What should you do when your laptop has been stolen and you did NOT have MyLaptopGPS installed? You know full well that if you would have used MyLaptopGPS, your laptop would very likely not be gone (00.4% theft rate) and even if it was, we’d be tracking it. But it’s too late. What now?

Is it possible for you to track down the laptop yourself?

How?

What are the first steps you should take?

The answers are important, straightforward…and to long to include in a brief blog post. Thus, MyLaptopGPS is proud to announce the availability of the Too Late Guide: How to Track a Stolen Laptop That Did NOT Have MyLaptopGPS. This guide walks laptop theft victims through the key things they can in fact do to raise their prospects of getting a stolen laptop back. It may be a long shot–but it’s a shot.

Download the Too Late Guide today and please let us know what you think.

MyLaptopGPS may not quite go to this extreme, but from your data’s perspective, it does!

An alert systems admin intercepted the emails and deleted them, but Parker found himself smack in the middle of a courtroom hoping to fend off a jail sentence.

You just never know what a stolen laptop will be good for. Many thanks to security curmudgeon for the lead.

Verse 1: Car thieves get personal data on Portland psychology patients, unemployed Oregonians (thanks to Jake K and lyger on DataLoss DB)
4,000 psychology patients and 2,900 jobless residents breached by stolen laptop and stolen data storage device in Oregon.

Verse 2: Stolen laptop puts data at risk: Information on Texas Children’s Hospital patients was compromised (thanks to lyger on DataLoss DB)
Doctor’s laptop containing clinical and demographic information of about 1,600 patients stolen.

Verse 3: Fort Worth medical clinic spends $15,000 notifying patients of theft (thanks to security curmudgeon on DataLoss DB)
Employees at a Fort Worth allergy clinic found the office door kicked in and four computers gone, containing PII and SSNs for 25,000 patients.

Verse 4: Aultman Health Foundation Laptop Computer Stolen (thanks to Redemtech)
13,800 home health care patients breached by a stolen laptop.

Verse 5: Boise Employee Information on Lost Tape (thanks to Redemtech)
About 300 employees breached by a missing backup tape.

It’s difficult to decide where to stop once this river gets flowing. We’ll call it good at five.

Regardless, an additional 860,000 current and former members of AvMed are being notified that their personal information is at risk due to the apparent theft of two laptops, which went missing from a locked conference room at AvMed Health Plans’ Gainsville office back on December 11.

AvMed once again mentions that there is no evidence of any malicious use of the data, which is normal, and that they are “strengthening data security and procedures.” Thanks to Redemtech for the heads up on the article.

But what is curious is that the laptop “had safeguards to protect sensitive information, including strong password protection and encryption.” Even still, the company is offering free credit monitoring.

No report of the number of victims has been given.

The response to the “breach” makes one wonder if there’s more to the story. Was the encryption not properly applied (very common)? Did the employee tape a handwritten plain-text passphrase note onto the palm rest (it happens–that’s why MyLaptopGPS offers Remote Decryption Kill)? Tough to say, and it’s all speculation. Something just seems odd about the reports and the response.

We will have to see if it shows up on the HHS Hall of Shame or not.