Associated Press reports that Greece’s Finance Ministry has been fined €150,000 ($200,000) by the privacy watchdog for allegedly failing to protect data on millions of taxpayers. The data ended up in the hands of private companies, or in some cases, in the hands of data thieves. The Data Protection Authority said Friday the ministry hadn’t taken…
Month: August 2013
Former Georgia Tax Preparers Sentenced for Tax Refund Fraud
The Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that former professional tax return preparers Greene Wylie Sheppard, Sabrina Johnson-Lavant and Chandra Henderson were sentenced this month to serve 56 months, 18 months, and 8 months in prison, respectively, for conspiring to defraud the United States by filing false tax returns in order to…
WA: Months after they learned of Vendini breach, Edmonds Center for the Arts first notifying customers
Notification delayed: In an email sent to more than 13,000 customers Monday, the Edmonds Center for the Arts warned that hackers earlier this spring had broken into the computer databases of Vendini, Inc, the ECA’s online ticket sales agent — raising the possibility that individual credit card information might have been compromised. ECA Executive Director…
Fraud Linked to Harbor Freight Tools Attack is Spreading
Tracy Kitten reports: A cyber-attack that hit Harbor Freight Tools and likely exposed card data processed at all 400 of its retail tool stores could rank among one of the biggest retail breaches this year, one card issuer says. In fact, the issuer, who asked to remain anonymous, says compromised cards linked to the Harbor Freight attack…
ICO provides breakdown of data breach reports
The Information Commissioner’s Office has provided an interesting breakdown of breach reports for the first quarter of their fiscal year. The data are provided by incident type and sector, here. Not surprisingly, the largest incident type was “disclosed in error.” The healthcare sector and local government reported the most breaches, but then, not every entity…
Tiger Team reviews accounting of patient data disclosures
Patrick Ouellette reports: Yesterday’s HIT Policy Committee Privacy & Security Tiger Team meeting discussed the background of accounting of disclosures for patient data and brought forward prevalent topics for its Sept. 6 virtual hearing. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) had been investigating the accounting of disclosures issue and requested that the Tiger Team hold…