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Huge Trove of Employee Records Discovered At Abandoned Toys 'R' Us (hackaday.com) 112

Posted by EditorDavid from the not-wanting-to-grow-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Hackaday recently engaged in a bit of urban exploration, taking a look inside of a recently purchased Toys "R" Us location that has been boarded up since the once giant toy store chain folded in June. Inside they found plenty of hardware left behind, from point-of-sale systems to the Cisco networking gear in the server room. But the most interesting find was on paper.

In a back office, they found "several boxes" of personal information about the store's employees, from their medical records to photocopies of their driver's licenses and Social Security cards [and also tax forms]. A video included with the article gives the viewer an impression of just how large a collection of files were left behind.

The author wonders if the situation in this particular store was a fluke, or if the other [800] Toys "R" Us locations were left in a similar state.
The article calls it "a very surprising look at what get's left behind when the money runs out and the employees simply give up...."

"We saw the great lengths the company went to protect customer information, so to see how little regard they had for their own people was honestly infuriating."
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Huge Trove of Employee Records Discovered At Abandoned Toys 'R' Us More

Huge Trove of Employee Records Discovered At Abandoned Toys 'R' Us

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  • Paper hacking

  • Trespass. Breaking and Entering (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So they call it 'urban exploring'?

    • Reading, reading, and more reading. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      From the article you didn't read.

      But much to my surprise, a friend of mine recently invited me to join him on a trip to the now defunct toy store. His wife’s company purchased one of the buildings for its ideal location near a main highway, and before the scrappers came through to clean everything out, he thought I might like a chance to see what was left.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Yep. It's a lot of fun exploring abandoned buildings.
        Assuming it's actually abandoned and in disrepair and there was no actual forced entry. Exploring abandoned factories and shit is a lot of fun.

        Sfill illegal as hell, but hey, it's a lot of fun. Hint: Forced entry is not required to be guilty of trespassing. It can be an additional charge on top of trespassing if it occurred, but trespassing is a prosecutable offense without it. If it's private property that's not yours and you have any reason to belie

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        I don't think "forced entry" means what you think it means. ANY amount of force can constitute breaking and entering - push a partly open door so you can get through? That's forced entry. But, even walking through a wide open door can still be illegal trespass.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Given that the only legal fiction that would have any reason to care is currently pining for the fjords, no harm, no foul.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      So they call it 'urban exploring'?

      Depends. Trespass requires an actual barrier that prevents entry, and breaking and entering require same.

      More often than not, some door or gate is left unlocked or other point of entry, at which point the urban explorer will generally exploit.

      There are a few on YouTube, and they often document places that are closed down. Depending on your point of view, they can either be a nuisance by being where they shouldn't be (proper urban exploration means touching and taking nothin

    • This would seem like a perfect time to say "So sue me!". "Urban exploration" differs from breaking and entering in that absolutely no one gives a shit.

  • Reminds me of when we moved into a new office ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by m00sh ( 2538182 ) on Saturday September 22, 2018 @08:45PM (#57362066)

    Reminds me of when we moved to a new office at our university.

    The old office used to be a different department and they left behind a cabinet full of documents.

    It was full of files of applicants, those who had applied to the department as faculty and students. Each of these files had all the recommendation letters.

    I read through a whole bunch of recommendation letters to see how people write them. Most of them were really weird and would not be happy if the applicant read it.

    They were not negative but not quite positive either. Just strange mostly.

    I couldn't believe that they had just left confidential documents behind. I tried to get them to retrieve the documents but I got no reply. I was quite furious that I had to deal with their cabinets full of their crap and just left it all outside as trash to be picked up. Who knows who read them and what happened to them afterwards.

    • You probably should’ve reported it to the university itself. At our university, at least, the bureaucrats take their rules and forms very seriously. They like nothing better than to enforce even trivial rules... the sort of breach of trust you describe would probably result in a public flogging.

    • I had interview notes from about twenty people. Some were hired, some not.When I was moving to another department I removed some of my notes from the records and took the rest home, saved them for a few months then destroyed them. Didn't want people who followed me in the job to share my opinions with other workers, some don't know what to not say or when to just shut the hell up.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      I thought this was puzzling, too.

      Best thing I could think of would be paperwork the employee had to fill out documenting a medical condition that interfered with work or resulted from an on the job injury.

      Ordinary medical treatment involving a doctor, I don't know how a specific store location would see this even if TRU had been the insurer of record. Some kind of statement about the employee treatments (using the bizarre, technical coding language of health insurance) may have gone to some TRU home office

  • That’s why (Score:3)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Saturday September 22, 2018 @09:13PM (#57362160)

    The last person at that location should set fire to the building.

  • Happens all the time.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22, 2018 @09:22PM (#57362186)

    As someone who was arbitrarily put in charge of "shutting down" a company after they closed their doors, I can attest that there are few guidelines, and few specific instructions.

    In my case, I was told to make backups of all the "important stuff" and send it to the parent company. I was also told to contact all lease companies and tell them to come get their shit.

    Beyond that, I was given no instructions on what to do with paper documents (shred them?), and nobody seemed to give two shits about what happened to any remaining assets.

    I left that company with a new desk and chair for my home office, and a small stockpile of equipment that was off-lease. The rest was left for the landlord of the building to deal with.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Strider- ( 39683 )

      Beyond that, I was given no instructions on what to do with paper documents (shred them?), and nobody seemed to give two shits about what happened to any remaining assets.

      Channel your inner Oliver North and have a shredding party...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shess ( 31691 )

        Beyond that, I was given no instructions on what to do with paper documents (shred them?), and nobody seemed to give two shits about what happened to any remaining assets.

        Channel your inner Oliver North and have a shredding party...

        Yeah, but shredding large volumes takes a lot of time if you don't have an industrial shredder. In a bankruptcy case, nobody gives two shits about this stuff. What are you going to do, sue them? They aren't going to pay for your time to carefully shred everything, they aren't going to pay for a third-party shredding service to bring a truck on-site. My guess is that if you even call and ask them what to do they'll tell you to quit screwing around and get back to work.

  • At the end they're getting paid shit, treated like shit, and they feel like shit. Management often gets canned ahead of time and replaced with management from liquidation outfits, so there is little to no continuity on backend matters. It's unfortunate that it happened but not surprising.

    Hopefully the other stores that are being turned into halloween stores are going to do a better job handling the flotsam.

    • Re:It's hard for employees to manage that (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Saturday September 22, 2018 @09:43PM (#57362248) Homepage

      The liquidators take liability for disposal, in this case were liquidators appointed, they should be prosecuted for failing to properly dispose of what are by law protected records, especially medical records.

      • The liquidators take liability for disposal, in this case were liquidators appointed, they should be prosecuted for failing to properly dispose of what are by law protected records, especially medical records.

        They should, yes. Will they though? Most likely not. They'll point the finger elsewhere and it will quickly be forgotten. After all, it would impede profit to go further.

      • There was a scrapping company due to either destroy or refit the building. They'd not arrived yet.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shess ( 31691 )

        The liquidators take liability for disposal, in this case were liquidators appointed, they should be prosecuted for failing to properly dispose of what are by law protected records, especially medical records.

        Why? As an employee, you now have a contractual agreement with a defunct company. There is nobody left who is responsible for those records. Maybe the facility was resold to someone in the bankruptcy process, but those records are not their responsibility (they now own the facility, they are not a continuation of the business itself).

        This is a general problem with our system. Companies do all sorts of negative things with no provision for cleanup if/when they die. Go out of business with a facility ful

  • So somewhat similar but not really to NCIX (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22, 2018 @09:44PM (#57362252)

    When a company goes out, it's not rare for customers/employees data to be later found mismanaged.
    Like recently, NCIX, a defunct computer hardware store, had a massive databreach due to them essentially leaving their old database servers on location in a place they couldn't pay the rent at, so they essentially gave everything to the landlord... Who sold it to people who made use of that data to make a profit by selling it to China.
    This include Social security numbers, past addresses, names and many other information, basically everything you need to steal someone's identity, of their current and past employees. There's even disk images of employees work and home computers in some cases, including compromising pictures, perfect for blackmailing.
    Along with credit card numbers, name, addresses, passwords, email, etc.. of customers.
    All of it in plain text within the databases that they carelessly left out when they went out.

    All this crap should've been shredded in an industrial shredder, instead they literally just gave it away, opening them to serious legal trouble even if they went bankrupt. It's a clear case of complete negligence and wrongdoing.

    • Donâ(TM)t forget about the photocopiers as well. Many contain a hard drive containing everything they ever copied.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      opening them to serious legal trouble even if they went bankrupt

      That's not how corporations work in the US. Corporations can just walk away from any and all of their responsibilities.

  • That wasn't nearly the worst part (Score:4, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Saturday September 22, 2018 @09:57PM (#57362296)

    The abandoned records were nothing compared to the shocking sight that was found near the back of the stockroom:

    The rotting body of an emaciated cartoon giraffe, its neck still chained to a standpipe.

  • I'd think this is more common than not (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Saturday September 22, 2018 @11:49PM (#57362650) Journal

    In my experience, I've always had to clean out old papers and trash when moving a business or business group into a "new" office. Much of that was just moving a group around within the facilities of a large corporation (one of the Dow 30), but, you'd think that would be better because the folks that moved out weren't losing their jobs.

    I've actually encountered the same thing with houses. I've done some flipping, and it is remarkable how many people leave almost everything.

    One home I rebuilt had been the home of a family with at least two young children. All of the clothes were still there, toys left where they had last been played with, kitchen fully stocked, dishes in the sink, bills in the drawers, all of the normal bathroom stuff in the bathroom, family pictures on the walls and in photo albums, and on and on. In my imagination, I figured they had been in a wreck or something where everyone died. I checked just to satisfy my curiosity and found that they had decided to move to Europe and just abandoned everything they couldn't take with them on the plane.

  • Inside they found plenty of hardware left behind

    'Cuse me, I think I hear my mom calling me. I'll see y'all tomorrow -- sorry, going to be somewhat busy tonight.

  • Standard employment docs (Score:3)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday September 23, 2018 @12:18AM (#57362732)
    Driver's license and Social Security number are the most commonly used documents for the I-9 form [uscis.gov]. Basically, the government doesn't want you hiring aliens and visitors without a work visa, but don't have a system in place for an employer to verify if someone is authorized to work in the country (is a citizen or has a work visa). Rather than put together such a system, the government requires employers to collect the I-9 - it becomes the employer's proof that they did their due diligence and collected the info the government required of them to "determine" work eligibility. (In quotes because the documents are commonly forged, and the employer can't root out forgeries because they'll get in trouble if they mistake real docs for a forgery.)

    The tax documents are probably the W-4 form [irs.gov]. They're used to determine how much of your paycheck is withheld (sent directly to the IRS) for income taxes. If an employee is dishonest or wrong and the incorrect amount is withheld (usually the employee errs on the low side), it gets corrected on April 15. If the employee had too little withheld, they could face fines. So the employer has to keep the W4 on file as proof that the incorrect withholding wasn't their fault, and they did as the employee told them to do. It's a matter that is entirely between the employee and the IRS, but the IRS doesn't want to do it themselves (employee could submit the W4 to the IRS, and the IRS could tell the employer how much to withhold). So they require employers to do it and force them to keep each employee's W4 on file. This one has always baffled me - the IRS verifies it anyway when the employee files their taxes, so it's not like the IRS would have to do any extra work to handle it themselves instead of foisting the job onto employers..

    Both are usually shoved in a filing cabinet and forgotten about, since the government requires you to keep them but they're never used for anything again (unless you happen to be raided by INS or ICE)..

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      Driver's license and Social Security number are the most commonly used documents for the I-9 form [uscis.gov]. Basically, the government doesn't want you hiring aliens and visitors without a work visa, but don't have a system in place for an employer to verify if someone is authorized to work in the country (is a citizen or has a work visa).

      Yes, why doesn't the government have a system like that... [e-verify.gov]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by m00sh ( 2538182 )

        Yes, why doesn't the government have a system like that... [e-verify.gov]

        The E-Verify system has its problems.

        We were forced to use it when we hired international students - basically recently foreign graduates.

        It requires every hire must be subjected to the E-Verify system. You cannot check someone and not others.

        It has some false positives and can delay work. You have to get the green light from E-Verify before the person start the work. If for some reason the e-verify system goofs up (some record some department hasn't updated somewhere), which it did a few times, you h

  • Why did they have medical records?

  • Meh (Score:2)

    by Scoldog ( 875927 )
    The car dealership I work for bought a car yard that the former owners had bankrupted. Got inside to look around the day we got keys. All the desks/furniture had been removed by the liquidators, but there were boxes of paperwork laying around that had customer info, bank details and financial info in them. There was also a huge box of unissued license plates.

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