" You people all need to realize taht it may not have been an employee nor does one plan for something as such to happen. one can not determine when they will fall victim to such a crime. Please give the community a break and hope for the best! dont look for the negative in everything, look for the good! "

" Who ever lost the laptop should be fired. It won't happen, stick the people that have to deal with the aftermath "

" So, if we applied right at the office in Auburn, our info is OK? 99 times out of 100 information is safe as it is transmitted across the Internet, but I have been saying for years: "But how well is it secured once it is in the company or agency's database?" -- That's the weak point, not during online transmission, which is locked down pretty tightly. And I am sorry to say I have been right -- most theft of personally identifying information in this country has occurred when someone hacked into the computer(s) where data is stored, not during transmission. So it doesn't matter if you gave your credit card info online, over the phone, by mail or even in person -- your concern should be how safely is it guarded once the company or agency has the info? The answer is often: not nearly well enough, especially as these companies share it among themselves for marketing purposes and lobby Congress to block new laws which would better protect our privacy -- because such laws would cut down on money companies could selling our personal information to each other for marketing purposes. It's disgusting. Another note -- the majority of times when systems are compromised, it isn't a tech hacker, but rather someone got physical access either to the equipment (as in this case) or to password info carelessly kept, like a secretary who can't remember the password so s/he writes it on a sticky note and pastes it to the monitor -- where someone else can see it. "

" Yeah big suprise that happened at that place... Well DUH "

" Wonderful. Cant wait to see how this works out. "