Personal data on at least 13,700 Nihon University personnel has been leaked on the Internet, according to the university. The leak occurred when a school official brought the data home with him on his personal computer, on which the Winny file-sharing software had been installed. According to the school’s public relations office, the leaked data…
Category: Exposure
NY: Patient files found dumped in Monticello
Leonard Sparks reports: Officials have seized hundreds, perhaps thousands, of files containing Social Security numbers and other private patient information found dumped outside the shuttered office of DRC Physical Therapy Plus. The manila folders, dating back to at least 1998, include information sheets showing the names, addresses and birth dates of patients and, in some…
Professor emails private student records by accident
Mike LaCount reports: On April 8, students in the UW-Milwaukee Geography department received an e-mail containing personal information of former UWM students, but the message was removed before most of the recipients opened it. Judith Kenny, associate professor and undergraduate program chair for the department of geography, sent an e-mail to 97 students in the…
Security fears as HSBC forgets to BCC
Ben Flanagan reports: Some of HSBC Middle East’s wealthiest customers have complained that their privacy has been compromised after the bank sent a mass mailout to its ‘Premier’ customers – whom are required to maintain a minimum balance or investment of AED350,000 ($95,300) – with customers’ email addresses visible in the ‘To’ field. The customer…
Data Redaction: You’re Doing it Wrong
John Bambenek writes: PDF files are a common way to distribute documents on the Internet and even are used for distributing documents with redacted (removed) content. However, when you distribute redacted documents make sure that the data you don’t want out there isn’t, in fact, still in the file. Case in point, take the upcoming…
ESB tells customers of leak
Bobbi Mlynar reports: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure for ESB Financial officials who this morning announced that a data backup seven years ago had inadvertently been sent to an unauthorized storage source. Marketing Vice President Karen Sommers said that the bank had hired a specialist to work on a special…