Fidelity Says Laptop with Customer Data was Stolen

Following in Ameriprise Financial Inc.’s footsteps from January, Fidelity Investments announced Thursday that a laptop containing the personal information for 196,000 Hewlett-Packard retirement plan subscribers had been stolen, according to a report by Reuters.

The stolen laptop went missing earlier this month. Fidelity Investments spokeswoman Anne Crowley would not say where the laptop was stolen from; however, she did add that it was not taken from a Fidelity or a Hewlett-Packard building.

Cracking into the data stored on the laptop will not be easy; the software application needed to read the retirement plan data has expired.