Author: Dissent

For what appears to be the second time this year, DVA Renal Healthcare (DaVita) has had to notify current or former patients that their data was stolen. In the most recent incident, a DaVita facility in Florida was burglarized and desktop computers were stolen. Although the computers were reportedly password-protected, there was no assertion that…

On October 10th, Joyce Musante, Privacy Office Lead for CIGNA, notified the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that a disk sent to a governmental agency by a certified courier on June 20th had been lost.  The unnamed courier notified CIGNA on September 9th that the package had been damaged and the contents were missing. Despite an…

According to a report provided to the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, an employee mistakenly transmitted an encrypted Excel file with enrollment data for Reed Smith to the another group customer. The file containing names, addresses, dates of birth, identification numbers (which are the individuals’ Social Security numbers), type of insurance contract, effective date,  and group…

Over on The Breach Blog, Evan Francen has written up some of the P2P breaches uncovered by Red Team Protection. It makes for fascinating reading, and a cautionary tale. If you have any patient or confidential information on your computer, installing or running file-sharing programs may result in you sharing much more than you intended…

Jennifer Nelson reports: When Brandon Sharp, 37, of Spring, Tex., applied for his first home loan, his lender called with bad news: The $20,000 in unpaid hospital bills on his credit report had damaged his chances for a mortgage. But Sharp hadn’t had any health problems. He was a victim of medical ID theft. Someone…

Brian Wheeler reports: The idea of people you have never met before leafing through your medical records would make most people a little uneasy. Even if the people in question are highly qualified health professionals. Read more in the BBC