Personal data of 26 million US veterans stolen

Yahoo! News reports:

Personal electronic data on 26.5 million US military veterans and some spouses was stolen from the home of a government employee, the US
Department of Veterans Affairs announced.

Veterans affairs officials said there was no evidence the information had been used but acknowledged it had exposed military veterans to the risk of identity theft.

UPDATE: GuardMyCreditFile adds some more information:

…The Department of Veterans Affairs has announced that a computer disk containing the names, address and Social Security Number of all 25 million living US veterans, 1 million dead veterans and 500,000 dependents of veterans has been stolen.

A data analyst for the department brought the information home to work on a department project. He had not received permission to take the data out of his office. The information was on a laptop computer that was stolen from the employee’s home in Maryland. The analyst involved has been suspended from work while the FBI investigates.