The embarrassing leak of a quarter-million State Department documents by WikiLeaks has recharged the debate over electronic medical records, raising concern that the government may not be capable of safeguarding Americans’ most intimate health care secrets when their records go digital. Doctors and privacy advocates alike are pointing to the havoc wreaked by WikiLeaks founder…
Author: Dissent
TX: Cyber thieves hit Gregg County for $200K
Glenn Evans reports: An international cyber attack on the Gregg County Tax Assessor has cost at least seven taxing entities a total of about $200,000, officials said Monday. Other Texas counties could also be victims. The cyber theft hijacked local tax payments from a daily electronic transfer, that day totaling $690,000, destined for schools and…
FL: Company Dumps Files, Exposing Personal Information
KMax Systems said a new manager threw out a box of job applications in a Dumpster by mistake. The files contain personal information. A homeless man found the job applications in the trash. […] KMax sells Kirby vacuum cleaners door-to-door. Read more on ClickOrlando.com
AU: Telstra red-faced after email error
Lucy Battersby reports: Telstra has accidentally leaked personal details of 570 customers after an employee sent an email to customers waiting for products rather than the stores delivering the products. An attachment containing customer names, general location and email addresses was sent to store owners asking them to update the order status. However, the Telstra…
Easy Numbers for ID Theft, Tossed Around by the Military
Matt Richtel reports: The government warns Americans to closely guard their Social Security numbers. But it has done a poor job of protecting those same numbers for millions of people: the nation’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. […] That is the conclusion of a scathing new report written by an Army intelligence officer turned West…
Jp: Police seize personal info on Internet subscribers after terrorism data leak
As a follow-up to a serious data breach in Japan: Tokyo police have seized personal information and Internet access records of subscribers from two Internet service providers (ISPs), suspecting that police documents on international terrorism possibly leaked online via their systems, officials said. The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) seized the information on suspicion of obstruction…