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…
Category: Breach Incidents
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…
Former WellPoint employee sentenced
From the Associated Press, news that Angelique Mullings, a WellPoint employee, was sentenced to more than two years in prison for stealing the identities of about 40 health care professionals to buy cell phones: Authorities say Mullings worked for WellPoint, Inc., a licensee of Anthem/Blue Cross and Blue Shield. They said she had access to…
Email error adds insult to injury
Karin Spaink’s blog summarizes a Dutch data leak: Many people who were duped by DSB Bank going broke, joined the foundation Hypotheekleed (’mortgage pains’). One of them suddenly started to receive e-mails containing the names, data and mortgage information of other members. Apparently, this happened because one of the employees of the foundation entered the…