14 DAY TRIAL // Another case of sensitive information being tossed to the dumpster emerges this week, as an individual found improperly discarded boxes filled with records of employees of the Graham Central Station club in Albuquerque.
The club had some trouble with the landlord and closed offices in November 2014. In the nightclub’s search results on Google, it says that it is permanently closed.
Anyone with bad intentions could have found the data
The person who reported the incident said that the personnel data was completely filling three large dumpsters.
“Driving down the alley, I noticed all the trash cans were full of boxes with what looked like files kind of spilling out the top of them,” they told KOB-TV, who is now in the possession of the data.
“If my information was out there, I would want it turned in and not just floating around,” the tipster added.
Companies terminating their activity have an obligation to dispose of employee data in a manner that does not allow retrieving the information. The method recommended is shredding.
It appears that the party that dumped the files was not Graham Central Station but the landlord, as a set of letters exchanged between the two reveal.
The nightclub’s management was denied access on the premises for months, as the owner of the space changed the locks. In a final letter to Graham Central Station, the landlord announced that the boxes would be destroyed.
The blame is shared between the nighclub and the landlord
“I would like to confirm that Graham is aware that we intend to destroy and dispose of all the boxes,” the letter read. However, it looks like the nightclub had no interest in making sure that the data is properly destroyed, either.
“Ross Plaza One evicted Graham Central Station from its building and offices in November 2014 and changed the locks, which prevented Graham Central Station from accessing its records for a period of months. Although Ross Plaza One assured Graham Central Station that its records would be destroyed, that apparently did not happen,” said Roger Gearhart, Grand Central Station president.
In the end, the landlord had no responsibility over the nightclub’s employee files, and the management of the nightclub should have dealt with the problem. The consequence, though, was a bad one for the personnel.