Facebook waited two weeks to tell employees payroll data was stolen

Hey, Facebook employees, Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t deserve you. 

That much was made abundantly clear today with the news that the Zuckerberg-helmed behemoth waited two full weeks to notify about 29,000 current and former employees of a massive theft of their personal data. 

Specifically, Bloomberg reports that unencrypted hard drives containing 2018 payroll data were stolen from a car belonging to a member of Facebook’s payroll department on Nov. 17 of this year. It took until Nov. 29 for someone to realize that employee payroll data was on the drives and then another two weeks for the company to start notifying those affected. 

A Facebook spokesperson contacted by Mashable both confirmed Bloomberg’s reporting and emphasized that the company believes this wasn’t a targeted theft. 

“We have seen no evidence of abuse and believe this was a smash and grab crime rather than an attempt to steal employee information,” wrote the spokesperson. 

Still, targeted or no, the thief managed to get quite a nice chunk of private data from one of the most valuable companies in the world. The hard drives reportedly contained employees’ names, bank account numbers, partial social security numbers, salaries, bonus details, and information regarding equity. 

In addition to working with law enforcement, the company spokesperson told Mashable that Facebook is offering affected employees “free identity theft and credit monitoring services.”

Which, yay. We’re sure that news will come as an immense relief to a crowd who — after Equifax — is likely drowning in offers for credit monitoring services. 

“We have a responsibility to protect your data,” in the immediate aftermath of the 2018 Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, “and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.” 

That sentiment, apparently, doesn’t apply to Facebook’s own employees. Maybe they should take note.