It has been announced today that up to 37,000 eir customers have been affected by a data breach following the theft of a staff laptop, the company announced this morning.

Eir have said that the laptop which was unencrypted was stolen from an offsite office, on Sunday August 12th. eir has stated that no financial data was stored on the laptop and the affected data only includes Names, Email Addresses, Phone Numbers and eir account numbers.

In a statement, eir have said:

“eir treats privacy and protection of all data extremely seriously and our policy is that all company laptops should be encrypted as well as password protected. In this case the laptop had been decrypted by a faulty security update the previous working day.

We are reviewing our IT and data protection systems and policies to ensure a situation like this cannot happen again.

If you do not receive correspondence from us regarding your account then you are not affected.”

Customers concerned can see more information on eir’s website by clicking here.

(Featured image: Licenced under CC. William Murphy (via Flickr.)