John Tullet reports: The South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) has denied it suffered a widely-reported breach, or leaked any personal information. E-mails from Sanral have made this claim in the wake of multiple breaches of its user data, and repeated calls for the agency to alert its customers that their data may have been compromised. Read more on ITWeb,…
Month: March 2014
EU Healthcare Coalition steps up pressure on data protection
Peter Mansell reports: The multi-stakeholder Healthcare Coalition on Data Protection has stepped up pressure on lawmakers in the EU to preserve, re-instate or clarify research-friendly provisions in the European Commission’s proposal for a General Data Protection Regulation. Among the changes sought by the Coalition, which was set up to “facilitate health-data processing for health purposes,…
Asylum seeker claims she was told to sign waiver after data breach
Paul Farrell reports: A Chinese asylum seeker at Villawood detention centre says an immigration department officer threatened to force her on to a plane for deportation if she did not sign a document waiving the department’s responsibility for harm she may suffer if she was returned to China after a massive data breach. Read more…
OH: Two sentenced for using stolen identities in tax refund fraud scheme
Tawanda Marimbire, 25, of Cincinnati was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 70 months in prison for his role in a scheme to use stolen identities to obtain at least $5 million in fraudulent tax refunds. Co-conspirator Kudzaishe Robert Bungu, 28, was sentenced to 27 months in prison. In early 2012, the Secret Service and…
GA: Cobb County Man Sentenced In Identity Theft Scheme
Bradford Thomas has been sentenced to ten years and one month in prison for using stolen identities of prisoners to file false federal income tax returns that claimed millions of dollars in fraudulent refunds. According to United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates, the charges, and other information presented in court: From January 2010 through May…
Telstra fined, warned after new privacy breach
Mitchell Bingemann reports: TELSTRA has been fined $10,200 and warned over privacy breaches after an information leak exposed almost 16,000 of its customers’ private data online. In a joint investigation by the federal Privacy Commissioner and the communications watchdog, Telstra was found to have breached the Privacy Act by exposing online the data of some…