Jay Weaver provides an update with additional details on a breach involving Rodney St. Fleur, an employee of a Miami law firm who misused his access to LexisNexis database searches to steal over 20,000 individuals’ information for a tax refund fraud scheme. Weaver reports that in court, St. Fleur admitted that he had stolen the…
Month: February 2013
US State Department hacked in the name of Aaron Swartz
This week anonymous hackers have announced an attacked on the united states governments state departments (www.state.gov) website. The attack was announced in normal fashion on twitter and has been posted to the pastebin hosted by par-anoia.net and comes with 1 clear message that it has been done in the name of Aaron Swaztz. "Aaron Swartz this is for you,…
DNA Privacy Gets First U.S. Supreme Court Test in Rape Case
Greg Stohr reports: When Alonzo King was arrested for assault in 2009 after pointing a shotgun at several people, authorities had no reason to think he was also a rapist. Then officials swabbed his cheek at the Wicomico County, Maryland, booking facility and ran his DNA through a nationwide database. The check linked King to an…
Hospitals tap drugstores to curb readmissions
Some collaboration or sharing of patient information seems potentially useful, even if it is money motivating the sharing. Julie Bird reports: Hospitals are looking to large drugstore chains, their vast databases and patient-outreach resources to help reduce hospital readmission rates. With medication discrepancies doubling the risk of hospital readmissions, contracting with drugstores to monitor for…
PA: Pileggi pushes for update to vague law on personal data theft
Melissa Daniels reports: Back in 2007, the theft of several state computers jeopardized the personal information of as many as 400,000 Pennsylvanians. Desktop computers from the Department of Public Welfare were taken from offices in Harrisburg and Philadelphia. Then, a laptop issued to the Department of Aging was stolen from a private residence. There’s no telling what someone might…
What can we learn from a statistic that 1 in 4 recipients of breach notification letters become victims of ID fraud?
I haven’t read the new Javelin Strategy & Research report because it’s pricey, but their press release on it contains some of its key findings. Of note: … nearly 1 in 4 data breach letter recipients became a victim of identity fraud, with breaches involving Social Security numbers to be the most damaging. If 1 in…