A research report on file-sharing risks that compares risks for personal financial information to personal health information: Khaled El Emam, Emilio Neri, Elizabeth Jonker, Marina Sokolova, Liam Peyton, Angelica Neisa, Teresa Scassa. The inadvertent disclosure of personal health information through peer-to-peer file sharing programs. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2010; 17: 148-158. ABSTRACT…
Author: Dissent
File-Sharing Software Potential Threat to Health Privacy
The personal health and financial information stored in thousands of North American home computers may be vulnerable to theft through file-sharing software, according to a research study published online in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. […] El Emam’s CHEO team used popular file sharing software to gain access to documents they downloaded…
ER worker accused of stealing dying man’s credit cards
This is not the first time we’ve heard about hospital workers stealing dying patients’ credit cards or information, but it is nonetheless distressing. Candice Ferrette reports on a case at Westchester Medical Center in NY, where a patient care technician in the emergency room has been accused of stealing credit cards from a dying plane…
Lawsuit filed against Elgin clinic over P2P breach
Steven Ross Johnson reports on a lawsuit involving P2P filesharing and patient data: Officials from a local medical clinic remained silent Monday about claims they allowed sensitive information on AIDS patients to be leaked. Calls to the Open Door Clinic of Greater Elgin, 164 Division St., were not returned Monday. The allegations, made in a…
NL: Data of medical applicants leaked
Karin Spaink provides this English summary of a breach that was reported in Bits of Freedom, March 1, 2010 and that affected an unknown number of people: The data of people who applied for a specialization as general practitioner after having finished their primary medical eduction, leaked via the website Huisartsenopleiding. Appending a first name…
NL: Tax papers of civil servants leaked
Karin Spaink provides this English summary of a breach that was reported in De Telegraaf, Feb. 27, 2010 and that affected hundreds of people: The 2009 tax reports of all civil servants, city council members and assistants of the municipalty Woudenburg/Scherpenzeel were leaked; newspaper De Telegraaf received a paper copy of all papers. The papers…