DataBreaches.Net

Menu
  • About
  • Breach Notification Laws
  • Privacy Policy
  • Transparency Report
Menu

AU: School students’ private medical details leaked in Google sync privacy mess

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Dissent

Here’s what appears to be a serious breach involving Google drive and syncing. Henrietta Cook reports:

Confidential files detailing high school students’ medical conditions, including anxiety issues and those at risk of suicide, have been found on a Melbourne schoolgirl’s iPad.

The document contains photos, names and medical and family details of years 7 to 12 students at Manor Lakes P-12 College in Wyndham Vale in Melbourne’s south-west.

[…]

The 14-year-old girl discovered the document on her iPad last month and said she had no idea how it got there.

Now read the following explanation from the Education Department carefully, because this looks very much like what some people reported in Springfield, Missouri Public Schools:

He said the private student information had been inadvertently shared with one student.

He said in May, the student borrowed a teacher’s laptop because she did not have her own device. The teacher sat next to the student while she completed an assignment on the borrowed computer, the spokesman said.

The student accessed her own Google documents on the machine.

The spokesman said that when the teacher later used her laptop the document they opened synced with the student’s account. This meant it turned up on the student’s own Google drive.

The spokesman said there was no evidence that private and personal school documents had been obtained by anyone other than the individual student.

But the girl’s father said that his daughter never used the teacher’s laptop.

“She doesn’t recall using a teacher’s device at all this year,” he said.

Read more on Canberra Times.  How did the teacher’s laptop sync with the student’s own Google drive? What configuration hell led to this mess? What should the district have done to prevent this from ever happening? COULD the district have prevented it or is there something in Google’s G-Suite coding that pretty much makes this kind of nightmare not only predictable but inevitable?
I’ll be reporting more on the Springfield case in the near future, but it’s interesting – albeit frustrating – that the reporting on this Melbourne case does not do a deeper dive into how this happened and how it could have been prevented – if it could have been.
I know there are those whose immediate hypothesis will be poor password hygiene or poor browser hygiene on the part of the users (in this case, the teacher). But by now, Google has to know that there’s poor password hygiene and poor browser hygiene. So why doesn’t it code take that into account enough?  Or did it take it into account but the district failed to follow directions? And how often do districts fail to configure Google products to be appropriately privacy-protective? Does Google’s coding and default settings take that into account?

Related posts:

  • Kept in the Dark — Meet the Hired Guns Who Make Sure School Cyberattacks Stay Hidden
  • Leon County Schools vendor’s data leak exposed 368,000 current and former FLVS students’ details, LCS teacher data, and more
  • Exclusive: Hackers claim they still have access to Clark County School District (CCSD), and reveal more details about hack and stolen data
  • k-12 school districts fall prey to Pysa ransomware
Category: Education SectorExposureNon-U.S.Of NoteOther

Post navigation

← Hackers accessed personal information of 30 million Facebook users
Pentagon reveals cyber breach of travel records →

Now more than ever

"Stand with Ukraine:" above raised hands. The illustration is in blue and yellow, the colors of Ukraine's flag.

Search

Browse by Categories

Recent Posts

  • CMS Sending Letters to 103,000 Medicare beneficiaries whose info was involved in a Medicare.gov breach.
  • Esse Health provides update about April cyberattack and notifies 263,601 people
  • Terrible tales of opsec oversights: How cybercrooks get themselves caught
  • International Criminal Court hit with cyber attack during NATO summit
  • Pembroke Regional Hospital reported canceling appointments due to service delays from “an incident”
  • Iran-linked hackers threaten to release emails allegedly stolen from Trump associates
  • National Health Care Fraud Takedown Results in 324 Defendants Charged in Connection with Over $14.6 Billion in Alleged Fraud
  • Swiss Health Foundation Radix Hit by Cyberattack Affecting Federal Data
  • Russian hackers get 7 and 5 years in prison for large-scale cyber attacks with ransomware, over 60 million euros in bitcoins seized
  • Bolton Walk-In Clinic patient data leak locked down (finally!)

No, You Can’t Buy a Post or an Interview

This site does not accept sponsored posts or link-back arrangements. Inquiries about either are ignored.

And despite what some trolls may try to claim: DataBreaches has never accepted even one dime to interview or report on anyone. Nor will DataBreaches ever pay anyone for data or to interview them.

Want to Get Our RSS Feed?

Grab it here:

https://databreaches.net/feed/

RSS Recent Posts on PogoWasRight.org

  • The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system
  • Supreme Court Decision on Age Verification Tramples Free Speech and Undermines Privacy
  • New Jersey Issues Draft Privacy Regulations: The New
  • Hacker helped kill FBI sources, witnesses in El Chapo case, according to watchdog report
  • Germany Wants Apple, Google to Remove DeepSeek From Their App Stores
  • Supreme Court upholds Texas law requiring age verification on porn sites
  • Justices nix Medicaid ‘right’ to choose doctor, defunding Planned Parenthood in South Carolina

Have a News Tip?

Email: Tips[at]DataBreaches.net

Signal: +1 516-776-7756

Contact Me

Email: info[at]databreaches.net

Mastodon: Infosec.Exchange/@PogoWasRight

Signal: +1 516-776-7756

DMCA Concern: dmca[at]databreaches.net
© 2009 – 2025 DataBreaches.net and DataBreaches LLC. All rights reserved.