BP Loses Laptop Containing Thousands of Oil Spill Victims' Personal Information

As if BP's reputation on the Gulf Coast couldn't get any worse, the company is now scrambling to address the disappearance of a laptop containing thousands of names of victims from the last year's massive oil spill. The company announced Tuesday that an employee lost the laptop, containing 13,000 names and the personal information of individuals who made claims related to the Deepwater Horizon accident last April. Read more: www.foxnews.com...

After all that these people have been through down there. Now they get kicked in the face again. Somehow as usual this doesn't surprise me. How do you just lose something like that? I mean I have lost my car keys before or shall I say misplaced them but my laptop----never. Let alone a company laptop with that much sensitive information on it? Something smells very suspicious here me thinks, but what would be the advantage of this other than identity theft which I can't really fathom a company stooping to that level unless it was someone from the outside?

Oops...

I'm sorry but we "lost" the records proving you're an oil spill victim. Better luck next time...

reply to post by v1rtu0s0


Yeah but what I am getting from the article is that most of these people might have been compensated already? A bit confusing to me.

If something of that importance was portable....why wasnt it backed up? silly goose

Either way its a disgrace,and doesn't anyone back up important files? This sounds really suspicious to me.

reply to post by v1rtu0s0


They aren't paying many people anyway...

reply to post by lostsock


Well thats two of us then. Yeah a mega huge company doesn't back up their files lol!!!

reply to post by jaynkeel


Wait wait wait.....
2 things - 1) I can tell you now those files would have been backed up - so all I can think is there are way more names than they are admitting too or some other really cool evidence that proves they suck more than they do
2) The source for this article is Fox News - Can you trust it? Don't they lie all the time? - Just asking

WTF? Why the hell was this data on a laptop? It should have been stored on a server accessible only via VPN. Worst case, the laptop should have had hard drive level encryption (such as BitLocker) to protect against cached files. But this data should have been in a master database on a server.

reply to post by jaynkeel


This is outrageous! I hope the state and fed governmants will step up to the plate. How could they all deliberately throw these people to the hounds like that?

But since this is a conspiracy site, could this merely be a play to manipulate share price?

reply to post by Nemain73


While I can agree that sometimes fox puts their own spin on articles there is no denying that the AP contributed to the report. Not that any media outlets can really be trusted these days but I can't imagine this being totally made up.

reply to post by jaynkeel


Agreed - can't all be cobblers
However it smells really bad and begs the question - what is on that laptop that they are really so concerned about? There would have to be a back up for sure of the peoples names
So what else are they hiding? Wait that may be a redundant question :\

reply to post by Nemain73


I suppose this is one of those cases where one of those new cloud computers would have been a great investment. Hell even an ipod touch would have been better, at least they could have synced it every once in a great while. But I feel it was lost on purpose.

I'm sure the data is/was backed up. Probably just a stupid spreadsheet the guy had on his laptop but the fact is they don't know where it is and there's 13K peeps whose personal info is in jeopardy.

Or could they stoop as low as this being payback for all the people who filed their claims? Either way looks like these people are going to be entitled to more $$ once the big lawyers get a hold of this, and I say more power to them.

Originally posted by HoldTheBeans
I'm sure the data is/was backed up. Probably just a stupid spreadsheet the guy had on his laptop but the fact is they don't know where it is and there's 13K peeps whose personal info is in jeopardy.

Agreed that is the real concern here. Loss of personal data.

My Credit Card company recently encountered an internal security breach and although I had not experienced fraud, sent me new card. Still a hassle revising all my "automated" monthly recurring payment accounts.

I think it is the "breach of confidentiality" that is the primary concern. Contrived retribution?

OK.....how conveinent......I'm speechless.....I'll just post this video and dedicate it to BP...it sums it up pretty well.

reply to post by kinda kurious


Yeah those auto pays are a blessing until something goes wrong and you need to change the info. Been there done that.

What are they running there? A nursery school? Convenient for them I suppose. Not so much for the claimants.

You can't honestly say that is the only place that information was saved?? Come on.....