150,000 affected by brewer's data theft

About 150,000 people in the US have been affected by the theft of laptops with personal information about current and former employees of brewing giant Anheuser-Busch.

A letter sent by the St Louis, Missouri-based brewer to the Florida Attorney General’s Office said the laptops, stolen in June, contained personal information on nearly 87,500 residents, including current and former employees, and more than 3,000 people involved in employee assistance programmes, either as recipients or providers.

The state of California was notified that nearly 55,000 of its residents were affected, said Abraham Arredondo, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office there.

In all, residents in at least six states are involved.

More than 4,500 people in Virginia and New Hampshire are also affected, according to reports from the offices of their attorneys general.

The missing data included social security numbers, addresses, dates of birth and other information, according to the Florida letter, given to The Associated Press by the Florida Attorney General’s Office.

Anheuser-Busch would not say how many people were involved or in how many states, so it was still not clear how widespread the loss was. But offices for attorneys general in a total of six states have confirmed either they or their residents were notified of the thefts.

The states involved are Florida, New Hampshire, Virginia, Missouri, Texas and California.

Anheuser-Busch said on Friday that personal information for current and former employees was missing after the theft of several laptops from one of its office buildings in the St Louis area, where it has its headquarters.

The company, the maker of Bud Light and Budweiser, said at least one of those laptops contained data on current and former employees, dependants and some people involved in employee assistance programmes. All the data was password-protected and encrypted and there had been no evidence that the data was used in any identity theft crime, the company has said in the letters being sent out.

The people affected are being offered one year of free credit monitoring service.