Sanne Specht reports: A Medford man was sentenced Monday to one year and one day in prison for stealing the identity of a North Carolina man more than 40 years ago. Gerald Lester Tracy, 65, also must pay back more than $28,000 in fraudulently obtained Social Security benefits, U.S. District Court Judge Owen Panner ruled….
Author: Dissent
Court papers confirm JC Penney as hacking victim
Phil Wahba reports: JC Penney Co Inc was one of the victims of notorious computer hacker Albert Gonzalez, according to unsealed documents made available on Monday by a federal judge in Boston. Read more on Reuters about how the retailer tried to prevent their name from being made public. The firm’s identity had been revealed…
Outed by judge, Wet Seal reveals 2008 breach
After being outed by a Massachusetts judge who felt that the retailer should have disclosed the incident in 2008, Wet Seal subsequently issued a statement acknowledging that they had a security breach that involved the hacking ring led by Albert Gonzalez. According to Wet Seal’s statement: In May 2008, we became aware that a criminal…
Organizations Rarely Report Breaches to Law Enforcement
Kelly Jackson Higgins has a column on why organizations do not rush to share information with the FBI and why the FBI wants them to share more: …. the FBI will protect victim organization’s privacy, data, and will share what information it can from its investigation, he said, rather than continue with the mostly one-way…
OIG Audit: The DOJ’s efforts to combat identity theft
Although identity theft is a significant public concern, a new audit report by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General indicates that it has become less of a priority instead of more of one over the past few years. Noting that the President’s Identity Theft Task Force (created in May 2006 by…
Barnet Council loses thousands of children’s personal files
From an editorial in Ham&High in the UK: Personal details of 9,000 school pupils in Barnet have been stolen from the home of a council employee, bosses have announced. In breach of the council’s policy the employee took home 20 unauthorised and unencrypted CDs and memory sticks full of the children’s details including names, dates…