State officials are scrambling to minimize the potential harm to more than 4,000 customers of the Georgia Department of Labor whose personal information was accidentally e-mailed to about 1,000 people.
“A document containing confidential information, including names and social security numbers, for 4,457 customers of the Cobb-Cherokee Career Center has inadvertently been e-mailed to approximately 1,000 people, primarily in Cobb and Cherokee counties,” the Labor department told AM750 and 95.5FM News/Talk WSB in a statement. “The e-mail occurred because of an employee error.”
The statement goes on to say that the department has notified recipients of the erroneous e-mail “and instructed them to immediately delete the file attached to the e-mail without opening it.”
The department also said in the statement that it will provide free credit monitoring services to all of the people affected.
Many of the customers contacted by WSB were upset by the erroneous e-mail, which also included ages, phone numbers and e-mails of those 4,457 people.
“I’m a little beside myself,” Dan Rossborough told the radio station.
“Oh, my God,” said Agnes Winder. “This is totally unacceptable.”
Clifford Lord agreed, telling the station, “This can’t be a good thing to be just handing out this kind of information.”
Raymond Hickcox contacted The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after receiving Thursday’s erroneous e-mail.
“I was shocked,” Hickcox said. “Somebody made a terrible mistake.”
Hickcox said he was worried that everyone who got the e-mail won’t be honest and delete the information.
“Clearly, everybody can make a mistake,” he said. “Now that it’s out, what do you do to keep people’s information from being compromised?”
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