Stanford workers' data on stolen laptop

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Stanford University has notified tens of thousands of past and current Stanford University employees that their personal information - including their dates of birth, Social Security numbers and home addresses - was on the hard drive of a stolen university laptop.

A Stanford spokesman said Saturday that the stolen computer contained personal information on people hired by the university before Sept. 28, 2007, which could be as many as 72,000 people. Stanford sent out an e-mail message Friday to all the current and former employees it could reach, advising them of the theft.