Rob Stein of The Washington Post reports: Matthew Brzica and his wife hardly noticed when the hospital took a few drops of blood from each of their four newborn children for routine genetic testing. But then they discovered that the state had kept the dried blood samples ever since — and was making them available…
Author: Dissent
Broadridge Financial Breach Exposes Dynegy Shareholder Info
Broadridge Financial Solutions,Inc. provides proxy services for clients, including the processing, distribution and tabulation of Annual Meeting Proxy materials for registered shareholders of publically traded companies. On June 2, 2009, the firm inadvertently disclosed Dynegy shareholder information including name, address, Social Security number and other account information to another client. Broadridge notified the shareowners by…
Bits ‘n Pieces
In the justice system: Cathy A. Last was charged with forgery, identity theft and falsifying business records for using another woman’s identity to obtain painkillers and stimulant medications. More. Dawne Flippen was arrested an charged with identity theft, first-degree criminal mistreatmdent, fraudulent use of a credit card and first-degree theft. More. Karen Priscilla Jones pleaded…
CardersMarket.com Boss Pleads Guilty
Max Ray Vision pleaded guilty to wire fraud today in a Pittsburgh federal court for stealing credit card and identity information from tens of thousands of people by hacking into the computers of financial institutions and credit card processing centers. Vision, who legally changed his name from Butler, used online aliases of “Iceman,” “Aphex,” “Digits”…
Pain and Suffering in the Aftermath of a Breach
One of the obstacles to consumer class action lawsuits in response to data breaches has been that most individuals cannot demonstrate actual harm, where harm is defined by the courts in financial terms. As Judge D. Brock Hornby explained when he threw out most of the Hannaford Bros. lawsuit, Maine state law requires that there…
Coffman on the Heartland Lawsuits
Tom Field of BankInfoSecurity.com has an interesting interview with Richard Coffman, the Texas attorney who filed the first class action lawsuit against Heartland Payment Systems (HPY). Coffman represents banks and financial institutions suing HPY. One of the more intriguing aspects of the interview has to do with why Coffman thinks that banks and financial institutions…