"Google has confirmed that personal data of US employees hired prior to 2006 has been stolen in a recent burglary. Records kept at Colt Express Outsourcing Services, an external company, were stolen in a burglary on 26 May. It is understood that Colt did not employ encryption to protect the information." - Simon from Bookmarklet

Thanks Google. - Paul Buchheit

"No credit-card numbers were in the stolen data, just names, addresses, [social-security numbers]; all the info needed for a thief to open new accounts using your identity," Ouch, that hurts! - Nenad Nikolic from Alert Thingy

Argh, it kills me how frequently this sort of thing happens and yet there's no legal requirement (or enforcement teeth) to force use of encryption, nor to limit SSN data to a need-to-know basis. Victims can really be hosed in these situations while the org gets at most a brief wristslap and reputation hit for that newscycle. - Casey

Btw, for those of you exposed by this incident, you can go a step stronger than a credit alert and put a credit freeze in place. You will need to file a police report, but the credit freeze can stay in place (at your discretion) for up to 7 years and would require a call to you verifying any application for credit before it can be granted. Slight nuisance factor possible in terms of you might not be able to stroll into mobile/Apple store and get instant gratification signing up for new account, but - Casey

at least it's stronger protection and peace of mind. There's a helpful privacy rights clearinghouse / advocacy group that has advice here: http://www.privacyrights.org/fs... My old links for the FTC guide 404. Good luck, I've been in your shoes and it's a pain in the arse. - Casey

If this affected you then you should have been contacted by Google already about taking steps to protect yourself. - Adewale Oshineye

Not so coincidentally, I wrote up a guide to protecting and checking on your credit record here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog... - Matt Cutts

Apparently all affected employees and ex-employees have been contacted. - Adewale Oshineye

Viacom did it! - Andy Murdoch

Chris: asking around, I know a few affected current and ex-employees that still have not been contacted yet. - Simon

They should contact Google HR who should be able to point them in the right direction - Adewale Oshineye

How janky does "Colt Express Outsourcing Services" sound? It's like a temp agency from a Wes Anderson movie. - Ginger Makela Riker

Haven't been contacted either - Jess Lee