Let the naming, shaming, and flaming begin!
A call to FactFinder 12 leads to the discovery of thousands of personal documents dumped in a Wichita alley.
Lone Star Business Solutions, a third party payroll and human resource company for Lone Star restaurants, dumped the documents in a large dumpster behind its building in downtown Wichita.
FactFinder 12 found thousands of personal documents including W-4 forms, employee applications, and employee files. Almost all the forms have Social Security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers from across the country.
Read more on KWCH.
I went to look at Lonestar’s web site, but got a malware warning from Chrome:
www.lonestar-solutions.com/insidepages
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 3 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 3 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2011-03-05, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2011-03-05.Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including chura.pl/.
This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS26496 (PAH).
Figures, right?
A bit more digging uncovered a blog post by Carrie Rengers back in November 2010 that indicated that Lone Star Business Solutions would be closing in Wichita this year. Well, that would explain the dumpsters:
UPDATED — As of mid next year, there will no longer be any Lone Star operations in Wichita.
“There was a decision to wind down . . . the management offices here in Wichita,” says Jan Dietrich, chief operating officer of Lone Star Business Solutions.
That office is part of the Dallas-based Lone Star Funds, which in late 2006 bought the group of restaurants that Wichita’s Jamie Coulter once owned.
Lone Star Funds is a global investment firm that happens to share the name of the restaurant group’s flagship business.
The group’s restaurants include Lone Star Steakhouse & Saloon, Texas Land & Cattle Steak House, Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House and Sullivan’s Steakhouse.
Management at those restaurants made the decision to outsource the services Lone Star Business Services has been providing, which includes handling payroll, accounting and human resource functions.
Last year, Lone Star Funds moved the restaurant management offices from Wichita to its Dallas headquarters.
Lone Star Business Solutions remained in Wichita at the Wichita Executive Centre at 125 N. Market.
Now, its services will be handled by InfoSync Services in Wichita.
[…]
So the company’s closing up shop and they just dump thousands of records, recklessly exposing people to identity theft?
What’s truly outrageous is that this doesn’t seem to violate any laws in Kansas and Lone Star Business Solutions doesn’t appear to be concerned about notifying anybody whose papers they just tossed, unshredded. Of course, if any of those applications were from residents of other states where notification is required, the business might be in violation of other states’ laws. One can only hope.
Perhaps the only redress employees and applicants have is to spread the word far and wide about what this company has done.
Hey, Congress: NOW can we get a data breach law that prohibits improper disposal of PII in whatever format and that requires notification of breaches?
Yes but it does violate Texas law and that is where corporate headquarters are. If it can be shown that there is no written policy or someone told them to just dump the docs then the TX AG will come breathing down their “higher than mighty” necks.