Adam Bennett reports: Hundreds of passport applicants have had their email addresses shared with other applicants in another government privacy botch-up. About 400 people applying online for passports were yesterday sent an email informing them of a system outage on the Department of Internal Affairs website. However, each recipient could see the email addresses –…
Category: Exposure
EMC notifying some employees after vendor error disclosed their names and SSNs to unauthorized parties
EMC is notifying employees after an unnamed vendor’s employee mistakenly sent out an Excel file with their personal information to parties not authorized to have their personal information. The error, which occurred on January 7, occurred because a quick glance at the file did not reveal the hidden fields containing their names, SSN, and old…
AU: Thousands of university academic union members made public
Julie Hare reports: The names and details of thousands of university academic union members have been accidentally made public. Lists of names, contact details and positions of the National Tertiary Education Union‘s members at five universities appear to have been collated with the intention of contacting each person to solicit funds to support a campaign…
Tyler Junior College data leak exposed housing applicants’ Social Security numbers and dates of birth
I’ve occasionally commented that consumers shouldn’t have to go to the media to get a breach or data leak addressed. Neither should students, but that’s what happened this week to Kierra Perry. Perry applied to Tyler Junior College in Texas. As part of the process, she also applied for housing and completed the background check…
UK: Failure to adequately redact results in undertaking for Treasury Solicitor’s Department
In the UK, the Treasury Solicitor’s Department has signed an undertaking with the Information Commissioenr’s Office. As described in the undertaking, there had been a number self-reported breaches involving exposure of individuals’ information due to incomplete redactions or failure to fully check: The Information Commissioner (the ‘Commissioner’) was contacted by the data controller on 6…
Indiana University notifying 146,000 current & former students that details were accessed by webcrawlers over 11-month period
Indiana University issued the following statement today: Indiana University notified the Indiana attorney general’s office today of the potential exposure of personal data for some students and recent graduates. The data potentially at risk for disclosure includes names, addresses and Social Security numbers for approximately 146,000 students and recent graduates across seven IU campuses who…