After my dismay at how a breach seemed to be casually revealed on Twitter last weekend, I thought I’d keep an eye out for situations in which use of social media might raise the specter of the HIPAA privacy rule. In the example below, I do not think that the twitterer violated the rule in any particular…
Author: Dissent
UK doctors’ personal data found on used hard drive sold online
There have been many instances in the U.S. of personal data showing up on equipment sold at online and offline auctions. Once such case in the U.K. involved doctors’ data and the company responsible for the data, Healthcare Locums Plc (HCL), a UK specialist healthcare recruitment agency, has now been found in breach of the Data Protection Act…
Woman gets 18 months for ID theft for misusing her kids’ identities
The Identity Theft Resource Center and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse have both been active in trying to highlight the growing risks of children having their identity information misused for fraud. In too many cases, the perpetrators are their own parents. Although I generally don’t report all these cases on this blog, here’s a case in Maryland…
TN: DCS building burglarized, confidential information found
Nate Morabito reports: Johnson City police are looking for the person who ransacked the Plymouth Road Department of Children’s Services building this weekend. According to the police report, officers believe a juvenile likely broke into the building to get the title to his car back. According to the report, that title was stripped from him after…
If your data in the cloud got sick, could you make a virtual housecall?
Gienna Shaw has an article on HealthLeaders Media about healthcare entities using cloud services. She includes a number of helpful examples of how cloud services can be a boon to entities, but unfortunately, there is no real discussion of the security and privacy risks in the article. The potential problems in using cloud services are…
A third of Spanish hospitals breach the Data Protection Act
One in three Spanish hospitals are in breach of the Data Protection behave, disturbing research has revealed. Some 30 per cent of public hospitals have no measures in place to prevent the loss of, or unauthorised access to, patients’ data during transport or whilst filed. A further 40 per cent of state hospitals, and 15…