…. As an administrative technician [for Child Protective Services, under the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services], Andrea Daniels was entrusted with the paperwork provided by families like the Robinsons who want to adopt or foster children. Daniels is accused of stealing personal information from at least 70 applicants including the Robinsons in exchange…
Category: Breach Incidents
Army warns reservists of identity theft threat
Martin Evans reports: The Army cannot account for files containing personal data from a regional reserve command based at Fort Totten and is warning some 12,000 area military and civilian personnel they may be vulnerable to identity theft. The records cover reservists from Long Island, New York City and upstate who were assigned to the…
NY: Patient files found dumped in Monticello
Leonard Sparks reports: Officials have seized hundreds, perhaps thousands, of files containing Social Security numbers and other private patient information found dumped outside the shuttered office of DRC Physical Therapy Plus. The manila folders, dating back to at least 1998, include information sheets showing the names, addresses and birth dates of patients and, in some…
Professor emails private student records by accident
Mike LaCount reports: On April 8, students in the UW-Milwaukee Geography department received an e-mail containing personal information of former UWM students, but the message was removed before most of the recipients opened it. Judith Kenny, associate professor and undergraduate program chair for the department of geography, sent an e-mail to 97 students in the…
Security fears as HSBC forgets to BCC
Ben Flanagan reports: Some of HSBC Middle East’s wealthiest customers have complained that their privacy has been compromised after the bank sent a mass mailout to its ‘Premier’ customers – whom are required to maintain a minimum balance or investment of AED350,000 ($95,300) – with customers’ email addresses visible in the ‘To’ field. The customer…
Data Redaction: You’re Doing it Wrong
John Bambenek writes: PDF files are a common way to distribute documents on the Internet and even are used for distributing documents with redacted (removed) content. However, when you distribute redacted documents make sure that the data you don’t want out there isn’t, in fact, still in the file. Case in point, take the upcoming…