A laptop containing personal information of nearly 243,000 Hotels.com customers was stolen in late Feburary 2006.

The company admitted that a laptop computer containing unencrypted records on almost a quarter of a million Hotels.com customers, including names and credit card numbers, was stolen from an unattended parked car where it had been left by one of Expedia's auditors from Ernst & Young.

While it appears that none of the stolen information has been used, yet, and that the laptop itself was password protected, it's taken 3 months for the company to report the security breach to its customers.