A company-owned laptop computer was stolen from an employee of Kraft Foods traveling on company business.
And now 20,000 employees nationwide have received letters telling them that their personal information was stored on the missing laptop and they could be vulnerable to some type of identity theft.
That group of 20,000 includes employees from Davenport.s Kraft Oscar Mayer plant. It is unknown how many employees of the Davenport facility were affected. The plant employs about 1,700 people.
Kraft Foods spokeswoman Cathy Pernu said the theft took place in mid-January and involved an employee who was working on a systems project. "It had migrating information that was transferring from one computer to another."
She did not say where the theft took place, but said the employee does not work at the Davenport plant.
"It contained the names and may have contained Social Security numbers," Pernu said.
However, she said at this time, Kraft does not believe anybody has obtained or used any information from anyone whose name was on the hard drive.
"We have contacted people whose names were on the computer, by letter, offering as a precaution, free credit monitoring ... to help guard against improper use of personal information. It is a two-year program," she said.
Only those who were potentially affected and received letters are being offered the credit monitoring program through TransUnion.