A few days ago, I received an inquiry from someone who had logged into her USPS online store account, only to see another customer’s name, address, and last four digits of their credit card number. Understandably concerned, she contacted customer service who told her that it was a “known error” and that letters would be…
Category: Exposure
Pension leak may dig into Russians’ pockets
Personal client data from the Russian Pension Fund has leaked onto the Internet. The Fund’s website published the full names and insurance and savings-account values of some of its clients. The information was removed within an hour of the leak, but it remained online in cached form, and could be accessed via a search on…
Spreadsheet with info on 19,276 University of Texas-Pan American students exposed on the Internet
According to its student newspaper, PanAmerican Online, The University of Texas-Pan American has e-mailed an alert to students affected by a security breach. The text of the e-mail is reportedly as follows: On Nov. 2, 2011, The University of Texas-Pan American discovered that on Sept. 1, 2011, a spreadsheet containing information on 19,276 students was made…
FL: Students’ Personal Information Exposed
Jacquie Slater reports: Parents in Wakulla County are worried after the social security numbers of thousands of students were accidentally made public. Superintendent David Miller sent the letter to the parents of more than 2400 students in grades four through ten whose information was accidentally posted on line. The glitch was found when a parent…
Anti-government feeling inspires dump of employees’ usernames and passwords
Oops. Drafted this yesterday, but never posted it. I’m old, I forget… Hex00010 of TeaMp0isoN dumped a bunch of foreign government employees’ usernames, e-mail addresses, and passwords on Pastebin. The passwords for Australian legislators and officials are in clear-text; those for other countries or organizations may be encrypted or decrypted, variously. Checking them out, I…
Abandoned Jackson Hewitt tax office’s returns put customers at risk
Kathleen Pender reports: A Bay Area woman named Kara got an upsetting call the morning of Oct. 22. The caller said she had found Kara’s 2007 tax return lying in a pile with hundreds of others on the ground in front of an abandoned Jackson Hewitt tax preparation office at 1734 Divisadero St. in San…