Contractor said he lost the device – storing names, addresses, dates of birth and tax details of 460,000 people – after an alcohol-fuelled night out

A city in Japan has been forced to apologise after a contractor admitted he had lost a USB memory stick containing the personal data of almost half a million residents after an alcohol-fuelled night out.

Officials in Amagasaki, western Japan, said the man – an unnamed employee of a private contractor hired to oversee Covid-19 relief payments to local households – had taken the flash drive from the city’s offices to transfer the data at a call centre in nearby Osaka.