The Internal Revenue Service does not always properly authenticate the identity of taxpayers calling its toll-free assistance lines before providing them with confidential tax account information, according to a new government report. The report, by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, found that taxpayers who call the IRS-toll-free lines are at risk of having…
Category: Breach Incidents
Maryland Attorney General Settles with Mid Atlantic Processing
Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler announced that his Consumer Protection Division has entered into a settlement with MAP, LLC, a payment processing company formerly doing business as Mid Atlantic Processing, and Martin A. Taylor and Rony Natanzon, two officers of the company. The Division alleged that when Mid Atlantic Processing closed its Owings Mills office…
NM Medicaid members told about security breach (updated)
This article replaces an earlier article which had less detail: The New Mexico Human Services Department said Tuesday that about 9,600 members of its Salud! Medicaid plan and fee for service members might have had their personal information, including Social Security numbers, compromised. […] The potential compromise occurred on March 20 in Chicago when an…
A failure to protect medical privacy
An editorial from the St. Petersburg Times: […] For more than half a year, strangers’ medical records jammed the home fax machine of Hudson resident Elizabeth Reed. The records described patients’ illnesses, lab results and prescription refill requests. The flow of records so disrupted the family’s home phone service that they resorted to using cell…
Heartland breach expenses pegged at $140M — so far
Jaikumar Vijayan reports: The costs to Heartland Payment Systems Inc. from the massive data breach that it disclosed in January 2009 appear to be steadily adding up. Quarterly financial results released by Heartland last week show that the card payment processor has accrued $139.4 million in breach-related expenses. The figure includes a settlement totaling nearly…
FL: Ex-teacher faces prison after pleading guilty to ID theft
Jon Burstein reports: A former high school teacher faces up to five years in prison after federal authorities say she pilfered the identities of past Broward School District students. Sheyla Diaz, 44, pleaded guilty on Friday to a single count of identity theft. She resigned in January from her job as a social sciences teacher…