WSFA reports: The Alabama Department of Public Health says it is in the process of notifying individuals whose personal information may have been stolen and advising possible victims of alleged fraud to report incidences of identity theft. ADPH released a statement saying it was informed on June 5, 2014 that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for…
Month: June 2014
MS: USM looking into possible identity theft by staff member
Associated Press reports that the University of Southern Mississippi is investigating allegations that an employee accessed personal information of other employees on the Hattiesburg campus. The employee has resigned.
Google: 100,000 lives a year lost through fear of data-mining
Not everyone agrees that there’s too much data-mining of health information. Alex Herm reports: Fear of data-mining of healthcare could be costing as many as 100,000 lives a year, according to Google’s Larry Page. Speaking out in response to fears over his company’s vast haul of personal information, Page made the case that not only…
Hospitals Soon See Donuts-to-Cigarette Charges for Health
So no sooner do I post Dr. Deborah Peel’s talk about commercial entities data-mining and selling our information, then Joe Cadillic sends me a link to an article by Shannon Pettypiece and Jordan Robertson of Bloomberg: You may soon get a call from your doctor if you’ve let your gym membership lapse, made a habit of…
University of California, Washington Center notifies alumni of vendor breach
The University of California, Washington Center (UCDC) recently notified alumni of a breach involving their course pre-enrollment system. As a result of the June 7 attack on UCDC’s cloud-based provider, GoSignMeUp.com, alumni’s usernames, postal and email addresses, passwords, gender, date of birth, and courses taken were accessed. The breach was discovered on June 9. The…
Designing Technology to Restore Privacy
Dr. Deborah Peel, the founder and Chair of Patient Privacy Rights, recently gave a TED talk, “Designing Technology to Restore Privacy.” You can watch it here: Her talk may feel somewhat overwhelming or even depressing, as the sale and non-consensual use of our health information is rampant – and legal. So what can we do?…