Alaska Dispatch

A state contractor has misplaced personal data for up to 77,000 former and current state employees who participated in the retirement systems in 2003 and 2004.

PricewaterhouseCoopers was hired by the state as an expert in a lawsuit against Mercer over retirement system issues. The firm apparently misplaced the personal information - social security numbers, names and dates of birth - in December. No one seems to know for sure where the information is - whether it is lost, misplaced, or even stolen.

Gov. Sean Parnell, Attorney General Dan Sullivan and Administration Commissioner Annette Kreitzer talked about the details during a press conference this morning. They warned of the potential for identity theft, and said PricewaterhouseCoopers has agreed to provide credit protection for the affected people.

Kreitzer also sent this email out to state employees, containing instructions for keeping tabs on possible identity theft and some other details:

Dear State Employee,

This morning the State of Alaska announced that personally identifiable information in the possession of the firm Price Waterhouse Coopers is missing. There is no indication at this time that any of this information has been misused, and we have not received any reports of identity theft that can be related to this breach. However, a number of actions have been taken to protect individual State employees and retirees.

The personally identifiable information includes some participants in the Alaska State Retirement Systems PERS and TERS(name, social security number and date of birth).

All participants affected by this loss of information will be mailed a notice in the next few weeks that describes the protections Price Waterhouse Coopers has agreed to provide to affected members. In the meantime,  a fact sheet has been posted on the Web at http://doa.alaska.gov/drb/pdf/price-waterhouse-security-breach-factsheet.pdf.  (Click here for the fact sheet) .

If you have additional questions you can call the Division of Retirement and Benefits call center at 465-5700 or toll free at 1-800-821-2251.

Annette Kreitzer

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