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: Exposure
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…
Blunder reveals Australian lawmakers’ private cell numbers
PhysOrg reports: Private cellphone numbers of most Australian federal lawmakers, their staff and several former prime ministers have been made public after a government department failed to properly remove them from a routine report. The Department of Parliamentary Services on Monday confirmed the blunder in its latest report on lawmakers’ cellphone and internet spending published on its…
UK: Norfolk County Council fined for leaving sensitive files in cabinet sent to second hand shop
From the Information Commissioner’s Office: A county council which left files that included sensitive information about children in a cabinet sent to a second hand shop has been fined £60,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The breach by Norfolk County Council came to light after social work case files were discovered in a cabinet purchased by…
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…