Apology Sent Over CalPERS Privacy Error

Pension officials with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System apologized to hundreds of thousands of retirees whose Social Security numbers were inadvertently printed on brochures mailed out last week.

Roughly 445,000 retirees across the state received the brochures announcing an upcoming election to fill a rare vacancy on the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System. All or a portion of each person's Social Security number appeared -- without hyphens -- on the address panel.

"While it is unlikely that someone would recognize the series of numbers as being a Social Security number except you, we consider this a serious incident and will take immediate steps to ensure that such an error does not happen again," read a letter to state retirees explaining the breach.