Brian Collister reports that the personal information of approximately 16,000 former and current Harris County employees was found in two electronic files in Vietnam. The information included names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth. One of the files was from 2005 and another was from 2007, both before the county changed its system to…
Month: July 2013
FL: Student information found in private school’s dumpster
WINK reports: Students’ grades, addresses and phone numbers… found sitting in a dumpster for anyone to see. That’s what one man found next to Bishop Verot High School. He worried it could get into the wrong hands. On the side of the school, there are dumpsters. They’re on school property, but anyone can access them….
CA: Long Beach Memorial Medical Center discloses insider breach affecting 2,864 patients
Karen Robes Meeks reports: The private information of nearly 3,000 Long Beach Memorial Medical Center patients may have been breached by an employee, the hospital announced Thursday. The hospital notified the 2,864 patients who were seen from September 2012 to last month of the breach of information, which included name, sex, date of birth, home…
Oops. Japanese Government Shares Internal E-Mails on Google
Akiko Fujita reports: You may want to think twice the next time you skip over those privacy settings online. Government ministries in Japan are playing damage control after accidentally leaking internal emails on Google Groups, unaware that the site’s default settings would make their private conversations public. A spokesman with the Ministry of Environment tells…
WellPoint pays HHS $1.7 million for leaving information accessible over Internet
From HHS: The managed care company WellPoint Inc. has agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) $1.7 million to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules. This case sends an important message to HIPAA-covered entities to take caution when…
Notice Regarding Microfiche Incident for Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth Patients (UPDATED)
Update: The Star-Telegram reports that 277,000 are being notified of this breach. Original post: Texas Health Resources posted the following notice on their site. Unfortunately, the home page link simply says “Microfiche Incident” and does not alert site visitors to check that link for an important privacy breach notification: Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort…