MySpace Fires Employee After Data Breach

MySpace employees experienced some unusual high and lows this week at work. On Monday, workers for the social networking site learned of a data breach orchestrated by a fellow employee, who collected names, Social Security numbers and compensation information of many of his co-workers. Fox Entertainment Group (the company that operates MySpace) sent e-mails to all employees alerting them to the incident, and assured them that no bank account or medical information was compromised.

Fox Entertainment promptly terminated the perpetrator; a departure from the typical MySpace and Facebook firing stories we often cover here at Switched. The internal e-mail, which was forwarded to TechCrunch, told employees that the thief used the acquired data to "annoy selected individuals," but did not send the information to any third parties. At least the thief didn't crash the company's server, as we've seen before.

In addition, MySpace employees received some slightly odd news via e-mail Wednesday evening: Southern California Edison power company had to shut down power to MySpace's Beverly Hills headquarters from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday. Employees were encouraged to grab their laptops and work from home the while the power was off. Since the e-mail went out after many workers had already gone home for the day, we're guessing many of them conveniently "missed" the part about grabbing their laptops. C'mon, everyone needs a day off!