Two men were arrested on suspicion of using a computer virus to steal personal information and leak it onto the Internet and then defrauding people of money by offering to resecure the data. This is the first arrest in the nation in a case of fraud using a computer virus, and it is only the…
Category: Breach Incidents
Stupid is as stupid does: the Lake Ridge Middle School breach
As a follow-up to previous coverage about the stolen Lake Ridge Middle School stolen thumb drive here and here, Andrea McCarren of WUSA-9 provides some additional details that have infuriated parents (emphasis added by me): The device was taken from a bag in an administrator’s unlocked car in her unlocked garage. ….. On the stolen…
Tulsa woman pleads guilty in identity theft case
David Harper reports the follow-up to a case previously covered here last month: A Tulsa woman pleaded guilty Wednesday to participating in a conspiracy in which personal identifying information was taken from St. Francis Hospital’s computer system and used as part of a scheme involving fraudulent credit cards and stolen mail. Teresa R. Browning, 36,…
City of Charlotte joins list of Towers Watson data loss victims
The City of Charlotte becomes the third entity to reveal that their data were on two DVDs lost by Towers Watson. In April, DataBreaches.net reported that Lorillard Tobacco was notifying employees that their names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers were on two missing DVDs. General Agencies Welfare Benefits Program also reported that…
(update) Students’ personal data exposed after USB drive stolen
Graham Cluley comments on the stolen USB drive from Lake Ridge Middle School. He draws the same inference I did — that because there is no mention that the drive was encrypted, he assumes it wasn’t. And…. wait for it…. it was stolen from a school official’s car. Speaking of school data breaches, I learned…
Ca: Shockingly easy to obtain confidential information
It seems you don’t need “friends in high places” to open doors for you in Saskatchewan. How about a humble data entry clerk? That’s apparently all it took for the Teamsters Union to obtain confidential personal information from the SGI [Saskatchewan Government Insurance] database which it then used to write to the home addresses of…