As reported by the Asahi Shimbun: Officers with the Gifu Prefectural Police leaked personal information to a Chubu Electric Power Co. subsidiary about residents and others opposed to a plan to construct wind turbines in their neighborhood. Their actions could constitute a violation of the Local Public Service Law that imposes confidentiality obligations on local…
Month: July 2014
ZA: How to wreck customer relations
Wendy Knowler reports: As corporate mess-ups go, it was pretty big. A “pre-legal credit controller” employed by cellphone service provider Altech Autopage sent an e-mail to 45 of its subscribers earlier this month, many of them former subscribers, telling them to pay up or face the consequences. “We refer to your Altech Autopage account which…
Game Over? Court Approves Sony Settlement In 2011 PSN Data Breach Case
Mike Futter reports: The US District Court for the Southern District of California has preliminarily approved a settlement over the 2011 PlayStation Network data breach, which took the service down for weeks. The cash value of the settlement could be as much as $17.75 million. The settlement includes an offer of a PS3 or PSP game,…
eBay faces class action suit over data breach
John Ribeiro reports that a potential class action lawsuit has been filed against eBay in the wake of its disclosure of a breach: The consumer privacy class action lawsuit, filed Wednesday by Collin Green, a citizen of the state of Louisiana, alleged that the security breach was the result of eBay’s inadequate security in regard…
European Central Bank receives blackmail letter after hack
The Local reports: The European Central Bank in Frankfurt has received a blackmail letter after its public website was hacked and contact data stolen, the bank said on Thursday. “There has been a breach of the security protecting a database serving (our) public website,” the ECB said in a statement. “This led to the theft…
UK: Online travel services company hit with monetary penalty by ICO following hack
From the Information Commissioner’s Office: Think W3 Limited, an online travel services company, has been served a £150,000 monetary penalty after a serious breach of the Data Protection Act revealed thousands of people’s details to a malicious hacker. The company was hacked in December 2012 after using insecure coding on the website of a subsidiary business, Essential…