Gerri Peev: Banks have attracted more customer complaints than any other group over allegations of mishandling sensitive information, the privacy watchdog reveals today. Lenders routinely lost, released or wrongly recorded personal data, the Information Commissioner warned in his annual report which detailed 603 complaints. But the true scale of privacy and data breaches could be…
Author: Dissent
AU: Telstra mail bungle breached Privacy Act
Josh Taylor reports: Telstra breached the Privacy Act by sending out tens of thousands of letters to the wrong addresses, according to the Australian Privacy Commissioner, which led to the personal information of about 60,300 Telstra customers being sent to the wrong people. In October last year, the Australian Communications and Media Authority and the…
MI: Laptop missing from Hurley Medical Center contained patient data
The other day they were claiming that there was no personal data involved, so I didn’t even mention the incident on my blogs. What a difference a day makes. Matt Franklin reports: Personal information of almost 2,000 Hurley Medical Center patients may be in the wrong hands this afternoon because the hospital says it is…
Washington Post reports breach of job seeker data (updated)
Elinor Mills reports: About 1.27 million user IDs and email addresses belonging to people looking for employment on The Washington Post jobs website were affected by a data breach in June, the newspaper has said. “We discovered that an unauthorised third party attacked our Jobs website and was able to obtain access to certain user…
AL: Patient data stolen from Troy Regional Medical Center used in tax refund fraud scheme
A press release dated July 6 – admirably prominently posted from the medical center’s home page – says: TROY, Ala. (July 6, 2011) – Troy Regional Medical Center (TRMC) has notified certain patients of a data theft incident involving unauthorized access and removal of some of their personal information. TRMC is conducting a comprehensive investigation into…
Out of sight, but not out of court
I’ve been busy recently, backfilling DataLossDB.org. I’m currently working on 2007 (because who wants to tackle 2008 until we have to, right?). In the process, I’ve been reminded of some breaches that most of us probably never paid much attention to or followed up on. As a case in point, consider this entry in my…