Coca-Cola Co, the world’s largest soft drink maker, said data belonging to 74,000 individuals, including thousands of former and current employees, was compromised when company laptops were stolen.
Letters are being sent to 18,000 individuals, as well as third parties, whose names and US Social Security numbers were on the computers, the Atlanta-based company told employees on Friday in a memo.
Another 56,000 will be sent to those whose driver’s license numbers and other sensitive data were on the machines, it added.
“While we have no indication that your information was misused, we take the protection of personal information security very seriously and will offer free identity theft protection services for one year to all affected,” the company said. “We apologize for any concern or inconvenience this may cause you and we are taking additional steps to enhance our information protection practices.”
Coca-Cola’s disclosure comes amid heightened consumer concern about corporate data security.
Target Corp, the US’ second-largest discount retailer, said as many as 110 million customer accounts were compromised in a breach during the holiday shopping season. Neiman Marcus Group Ltd said on Thursday that about 1.1 million credit cards may have been compromised in an incident last year.
On Saturday, Michaels Stores Inc, the world’s largest arts-and-crafts retailer, said that some of its customer payment-card information may have been used fraudulently.
The company, which sells everything from painting supplies to floral arrangements to yarn, said it is urging customers to check their account statements for unauthorized charges and it is working with law enforcement and a third party to determine the scope of the problem.
US House of Representatives and Senate lawmakers are stepping up demands for greater scrutiny of data breaches at Target.
House lawmakers are planning a hearing for the first week of next month, while a Senate subcommittee was to hold a hearing on the data breaches. Customers have filed almost two dozen lawsuits again Target.
Coca-Cola’s laptops have since been recovered. Other documents on the computers, such as compensation, ethnicity and addresses, are considered sensitive by company policy, although not under US and Canadian law.
The laptops were retrieved from a former employee who was supposed to maintain or dispose of the equipment, Coca-Cola said. After learning the computers contained personal information last month, Coca-Cola brought in extra technical crews to sort through the data so legal notices could be sent, it said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained