Last week, John Cuoco reported that approximately 6,000 Milwaukee Public School District employees found their Social Security numbers exposed in plain view on mailings due to an error by a third party vendor providing prescription drug coverage for MPS Medicare D recipients. Yesterday, he updated his reporting to identify the vendor: The Milwaukee Public School District…
Category: Education Sector
Receptionist at Institute of Allied Medical Professionals charged with stealing, misusing students’ personal info
John Nickerson reports that Bianca Torres of Bridgeport has been charged with stealing personal information of students at at the Institute of Allied Medical Professionals. Torres was employed as a receptionist at the institute for six weeks. Police began investigating after one of the victims did her own investigating and tracked some fraudulent charges on her credit…
Computer server containing Virginia Tech job application info illegally accessed (updated)
Virginia Tech has learned that a computer server in the Department of Human Resources was illegally accessed on August 28, 2013. A VT spokesperson informs DataBreaches.net that the illegal access was from outside the school an IP address in Italy. The server contained information about 144,963 individuals who used the institution’s online employment application process…
Oh, those hidden fields in Excel spreadsheets: Columbia University Medical Center notifies students of breach
It seems that Columbia University Medical Center inadvertently exposed the Social Security numbers of 138 medical students from the graduating class of 2013 in an Excel spreadsheet sent to faculty, students, and staff. CUMC became aware of the breach on March 15. The breach occurred because the Excel spreadsheet with residency match lists for the graduating…
Audit of State University of New York at Albany reveals to-be-surplussed devices certified as “clean” still contained PII
I periodically post audits from the NYS Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office pertaining to data protection. A recently released audit of SUNY-Albany reminds us that we need to continue to be concerned about inadequately wiped devices or drives that are to be surplussed. The audit period covered January – May 2012, and during that time, SUNY-Albany…
Hanoi: 200 students off school because of hacker
Two hundred primary school students in Hanoi had a day off from school after a programmer hacked into the school’s messaging system to send a false notification to parents that students should take the day off. The programmer worked for a company that competes with the Ha Dinh school’s software provider and reportedly did it…