What constitutes a privacy harm? For those of us covering data breaches and privacy breaches, there’s been a somewhat disturbing trend by courts to restrict the notion of “harm” to unreimbursed financial harm due to a breach. Worry, embarrassment, time lost, and increased risk of future harm are recognized as being consequences, but generally, plaintiffs…
Category: Breach Incidents
Nl: City sends wrong file
Seen at Karin Spaink’s blog: After requesting a directory of the services of city X, a citizen of that city was sent not that directory, but a file containing the names of the circa 2800 people living in that city who may not renew their passport or who have to hand in their passport. Reasons…
ACH Fraud Sparks Another Suit
Linda McGlasson reports: In another round of bank vs. customer, a Maine business has sued its bank, alleging that the institution failed to prevent fraudulent ACH transactions totaling more than $500,000. Patco, a Sanford, Maine-based construction company, had its corporate bank account raided over a six-day period last May by cyber thieves who were able…
NHTSA’s Complaint Database Leaks Private Information Like A Sieve
Edward Niedermeyer reports: Our Canadian pal carquestions took a look through NHTSA’s public complaint database, and found four examples of personal information that NHTSA should have redacted but didn’t. You know, things like names, birth dates, social security numbers, addresses, VINs, and drivers license numbers. And he found those four after searching through “12 or…
IN: Local restaurant targeted by online hackers
Kimberly King reports: A local restaurant reports a security breach affecting its customers. Hackers tapped into the credit card machines at Marco’s, stealing credit and debit card numbers from several customers, wiping out their bank accounts. Like any weeknight at Marco’s Restaurant, owner Mark Poulos was busy with loyal customers who’ve been coming there for…
(follow-up) Insurer says it’s not liable for University of Utah’s $3.3M data breach
Jaikumar Vijayan has a bit more on the suit filed by Colorado Casualty Insurance Co., who does not want to pay out for Perpetual Storage’s data breach involving the University of Utah. I thought the suit had been filed last month but it seems that it was just filed last week. Read more on Computerworld.