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IRS employee exposed 20k workers’ SSN on unsecured home network

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Dissent

The folks that we hope will look out for us so we don’t become victims of identity theft for tax refund fraud seem to be having problems with their own data.

Stephen Ohlemacher of Associated Press reports:

The Internal Revenue Service is reporting a potential security breach involving personal information about 20,000 IRS workers, former workers and contractors.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Tuesday an employee took home a computer thumb drive containing names, Social Security numbers and addresses of the workers.

Koskinen says the drive was plugged into the employee’s unsecure home network, putting it at risk for public release. However, he says there has been no evidence the information has been used inappropriately.

Read more on The Tribune.


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