Hundreds of highly confidential medical documents including a parents’ plea for help for her mentally ill daughter have been found dumped in a nurse’s backyard. The documents, found in see-through recycle bags in easy reach of passers-by, contained sensitive information about patients from across South London including names, addresses and whether they had arthritis, bunions,…
Category: Breach Incidents
Police files found in dumpster
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of personal files from the Scranton Police Department were found unshredded in a dumpster, according to a news story on WNEP. “One or more files that should have been shred were thrown into the dumpster,” said Scranton Director of Public Safety Ray Hayes. He admitted that a mistake was made. Newswatch 16…
PerlMonks suffers unholy hack
Web developer site PerlMonks is obliging users to change up their passwords, following a successful hacking attack. The community website, which provides a forum for users interested in Perl programming and related subjects, such as web applications and system administration, posted a notice (extract below) admitting the hacker had breached its systems in May. The…
SSA employee convicted for unauthorized access to govt computer
Roberto Rodriguez, 54, formerly of Fort Lauderdale, FL, was convicted by a jury on July 29, 2009 of seventeen counts of exceeding his authorized access to a government computer. Rodriguez is scheduled to be sentenced on October 9, 2009, before U.S. District Court Judge William J. Zloch. Rodriguez, while an employee at the Social Security…
Tax-preparation docs found in dumpster
WOIA in Texas reports that San Antonio police are investigating how boxes full of unredacted personal information including Social Security numbers and financial information were sitting in the in the open in a dumpster. All of the paperwork was labeled “Century Income Tax.” WOAI reports that the owner of the firm has not returned any…
Methinks he might protest too much
As someone who routinely makes snarky pronouncements about breaches, I was actually impressed by how Toronto Hydro handled their recent data breach. Yet some people were strongly critical. The facts of the breach, as I currently understand them are that: 179,000 Toronto Hydro customer account numbers were illegally accessed in the company’s e-billing system. Toronto…