What should Starbucks do if they lose four laptops containing vital information on about 600,000 current and former U. S. employees, along with no more than 80 Canadian workers and contractors? Give them a compensation package of free Starbucks for life, that's what.

Unfortunately, that's not how they run things over there, so that's but wishful thinking. What is fact is that the coffee giant indeed lost track of four laptop computers from a closet in their corporate support center over at its south Seattle headquarters. Spokesperson Valerie O'Neil explained that they have been looking for them laptops since early September, but that it is only now that they are notifying those who may be potentially affected. She says it was because "we wanted to make sure we were thorough before we notified people."

Remaining optimistic (or probably just on a caffeine-high), she further says, "We have no reason to believe those laptops are in the hands of someone who wants to misuse them..We just want to make every effort to protect our partners." The data from two of the missing laptops contain names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and is about three years old (since prior December 2003).

Notifying those whose information are in the laptops, Starbucks urged them to be on alert for any suspicious activity in their accounts. Add to that, they also promised free credit protection services to enable them with the tracking down of their accounts. Starbucks is now "reinforcing its corporate policies and updating procedures on protecting the personal information of its employees to prevent such data loss from happening again".

I'll take that to go.