Sam Colt reports: Connecticut’s attorney general has called for a meeting with Apple over concerns about the privacy of health data collected by the Apple Watch. “When new technologies emerge in consumer markets they inevitably lead to new questions, including questions about privacy,” Attorney General Jepsen said. Apple has already said that it will not…
Month: September 2014
Monthly reports to Congress show VA still experiencing hundreds of breaches each month
The Veterans Administration continues to struggle with securing veterans’ personal and protected health information, as its monthly reports to Congress reflect. First, consider the sheer number of different types of incidents reported to Congress for the month of August: Total number of Internal Un-encrypted E-mail Incidents 92 Total number of Mis-Handling Incidents 114 Total number…
Aventura Hospital notifies 82,601 patients of possible data theft; third theft incident in 2 years
A breach entry added to HHS’s public breach tool last week reveals that 82,601 Aventura Hospital and Medical Center patients may have had their identity information stolen by an employee of their business associate, Valesco Ventures. At the time of this publication, there is no statement or notification on Aventura’s web site. PHIprivacy.net was, however, able to find a Legal Notice published in…
McKesson subsidiary exposed over 10,000 patients' information via Google search; data exposed for more than 4 months
PST Services, a McKesson subsidiary providing medical billing services, reportedly had a breach that impacted multiple clients and left more than 10,000 patients’ information exposed via Google search for over four months. The full scope of the breach has yet to be determined. Based on HHS’s public breach tool, it appears that the breach occurred on December 1, 2013 and affected 24…
Hackers pop Brazil newspaper to root home routers
Darren Pauli reports: A popular Brazilian newspaper has been hacked by attackers who used code that attacked readers’ home routers, says researcher Fioravante Souza of web security outfit Sucuri. Attackers implanted iFrames into the website of Politica Estadao, which when loaded began brute force password guessing attacks against users. Read more on The Register.
Rob Ford tumour diagnosis: Do politicians have a right to medical privacy?
Mark Gollom reports: When Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s doctor released the details of his abdominal tumour, it may have surprised some Canadians, not used to such medical information being revealed about one of their politicians. […] It was a rare public detailing of a Canadian politician’s medical condition. And it brought into focus the issue of how much medical privacy…