Man gets drunk, loses USB drive containing entire city's personal information

An unnamed Japanese worker lost a drive with personal information for the city of Amagasaki's residents on it last week

By Reid McCarter  |  June 28, 2022 | 4:30pm
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Man gets drunk, loses USB drive containing entire city's personal information
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Two patrons enjoy some drinks in Osaka without, we hope, leaking sensitive information in the process. Photo: Buddhika Weerasinghe

Everyone’s done things they regret when hitting the bottle a bit too hard, but it’s very rare for anyone to get so fully blottoed that they end up losing the personal information of an entire city’s residents in the process. One man has managed to pull off this stunning feat, however, providing himself an eternal home in the Valhalla of terrible accidents.

Vice explains that the man in question, unnamed for obvious reasons, is an IT employee of a company called BIPROGY. His company was hired by the Japanese city of Amagasaki’s government “to find out who in the city was eligible for tax exemptions.” Though he reportedly wasn’t given permission to do so, the man copied information that contained “the personal data of Amagasaki’s 465,177 residents, including their dates of birth, addresses, bank account numbers, and tax details” onto a USB drive so he could keep working at a different office.

Last Tuesday, with this drive tucked away in his bag, the guy went out drinking, “fell asleep on the street,” and later woke up to discover that his bag was gone. Presumably suffering the mental and physical effects of a hangover sent straight from the bowels of hell, the worker was unable to find his bag again until Friday. According to Vice, he located it “near an apartment building he vaguely recalls passing by during his night out ….”

The day before the drive was recovered, though, BIPROGY issued a statement apologizing to nearly half a million people “for the inconvenience caused by the loss of important information entrusted to us.” This apology prompted “30,000 calls in one day” in response. At the time of writing, Amagasaki officials are still “trying to assess whether any data has been compromised.”

Let this be a warning. Not every instance of legendary drunkenness results in getting someone a job or ending up the owner of a dinosaur skull. Sometimes it just massively endangers the privacy of many, many thousands of people.

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