Oh my.
It seems that on October 24, Monster Worldwide was contacted by a former employee, who while Googling her name, discovered a spreadsheet with her employment details including her name, address, job title, date of birth, salary, and Social Security number.
The spreadsheet had been created in 2003 and was available on the web for an unknown period of time – but not on Monster’s server. The file was on the personal server of another former employee who had left Monster in 2007 and reportedly had no idea that he had made the file publicly available or when he had done so. He had no idea why he even had the file, it seems.
Google complied promptly to remove the file from its cache, and within 24 hours, the file was no longer available via Google or other major search engines.
Monster notified the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office on November 4, with letters and offers of free crediting monitoring going out to affected employees shortly thereafter.
Monster has suffered huge data breaches in the past, including one in 2007 affecting hundreds of thousands and one in 2009 affecting 4.5 million. The total number affected in this breach was not disclosed.