William H. McMichael reports: Pay statements containing names and sensitive information about the finances of about 18,000 recipients of a special pay for disabled retirees were sent to wrong addressees last week, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service said Jan. 14. The statements, a page of which contained information about annual increases in Concurrent Retirement…
Author: Dissent
Western Michigan U. exposed student info on web
On December 14, Western Michigan University discovered that some student employees’ names, addresses, department, and Social Security numbers were exposed on a WMU web page “for a brief period of time.” According to a notification sent by ID Experts to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office on December 22, the university secured the information immediately…
FEATURED: Medical Identity Theft Is Low-Tech, High-Risk and Rapidly Growing
Reprinted from REPORT ON PATIENT PRIVACY, the industry’s most practical source of news on HIPAA patient privacy provisions. By Liana Heitin, Editor With many legislators, law enforcement officials, and privacy experts now calling it the fastest-growing type of crime, medical identity theft has emerged as a forefront issue for health care providers. And while ID…
(follow-up) Kr: Website not responsible for data theft
This is one of the breaches in the top 10 list, where I had previously noted that some sources said 18 million were affected by the hack, while Auction claimed 10.8 million. Whatever the correct number, the online service was found not to be responsible for the breach. Joong Ang Daily Reports: A local court…
Russian arrested in Kenya with 107 ATM cards
Bernard Momanyi reports from Nairobi: A man who claims to be a Russian was arrested in Nairobi on Thursday after he was found withdrawing money from an automated teller machine (ATM) while in possession of 107 fake bank cards. The man was arrested at the CFC Stanbic branch on Kimathi Street at about noon, police…
Medical records often held hostage
Elizabeth Cohen reports: For five days as her husband lay in his hospital bed suffering from kidney cancer, Regina Holliday begged doctors and nurses for his medical records, and for five days she never received them. On the sixth day, her husband needed to be transferred to another hospital, without his complete medical records. “When…