Abbie Bennett reports: UNC Health Care is alerting its prenatal patients that their confidential medical information may have been shared with their home county, including Social Security numbers, sexually-transmitted disease information and more. Women seen for prenatal appointments at two UNC Health Care obstetric clinics between 2014 and 2017 may have filled out a form…
Category: U.S.
Saks Fifth Avenue Exposed Personal Info On Tens Of Thousands Of Customers
Leticia Miranda reports: The personal information of tens of thousands of customers of Saks Fifth Avenue has been publicly available in plain text online, BuzzFeed News has learned. The online shopping site for the brand is maintained by the digital division of its owner, the Canada-based Hudson’s Bay Company. Until recently, unencrypted, publicly accessible web…
DA launches criminal probe into St. Charles breach
The St. Charles Health System may think they’ve met all their obligations in their handling of an insider snooping incident, but Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel says the matter should have been reported to them for criminal investigation. Now that’s interesting to think about. If a covered entity is convinced that an employee snooped…
No, you can’t defend your reputation if it means revealing PHI without the patient’s consent
Here we go again, it seems. No matter how irate you may be a patient’s bad review and no matter how unfair you think it may be, no, you cannot just reveal their protected health information without their consent – even if they revealed some of it themselves. Patrick Danner reports: A San Antonio doctor…
TX: Email gaffe revealed 1,417 cancer patients’ email addresses
Cindy George reports: A “carbon copy” email sent last week from the Houston Methodist Cancer Center to patients showed the addresses of all recipients, potentially revealing their identities to the public and their association with the treatment facility. Patients were alerted about the issue by Houston Methodist in a letter dated March 16 and sent…
Oh those inadequately secured backup devices…
While I’ve been busy tracking W-2 phishing scams, let’s not lose sight of the fact that there are other ways for criminals to obtain W-2 or tax information, and that human error continues to turn assets into low-hanging fruit. Interpreters Unlimited recently notified the Vermont Attorney General’s Office that the contents of an employee’s backup device were…