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NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. - Personal information from more than 8,900 people was stolen when thieves broke into a Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles office, officials said Friday.

A computer taken during the break-in contained names, ages, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, photographs and signatures of southern Nevada residents who obtained driver's licenses between Nov. 25 and March 4 at the North Las Vegas office, state DMV chief Ginny Lewis said.

The DMV had previously maintained that the information on the computer stolen in Monday's break-in was encrypted, making it virtually useless to thieves.

But Lewis said Friday that Digimarc Corp., the Beaverton, Ore.,-based company that provides digital driver's licenses in Nevada, told her Thursday the information was not encrypted, and was readily accessible.

Miz Nakajima, Digimarc spokeswoman, said Friday she could not comment on specifics about state DMV customers or the Nevada theft. The publicly traded company provides a service Nakajima called "digital watermarking" to motor vehicle departments in 34 states and the District of Columbia.

All 21 Nevada DMV licensing stations were ordered by the end of the day Friday to remove personal information from computers to prevent a recurrence, Lewis said.

The Nevada DMV planned to send certified letters by next week informing the drivers that their personal information had been stolen. They will be issued new licenses with new identification numbers, Lewis said.

The Nevada DMV data theft comes after personal information was stolen from a database owned by the information broker LexisNexis and from the giant data broker ChoicePoint Inc. Another data loss affected some 1.2 million federal employees with Bank of America charge cards.

Besides the computer, thieves took a camera, 1,700 license blanks and laminated plastic covers bearing the embossed state seal.