Tracy Wilkinson reports: When the government launched a nationwide campaign to register cellphones, millions of Mexicans refused. And thousands of others registered with a familiar name: Felipe Calderon, the country’s president…. Some said they were convinced that the government would use the information to spy on dissidents or anyone else out of favor. Others said…
Category: Exposure
IRS Divulges Personal Taxpayer Information
The Internal Revenue Service does not always properly authenticate the identity of taxpayers calling its toll-free assistance lines before providing them with confidential tax account information, according to a new government report. The report, by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, found that taxpayers who call the IRS-toll-free lines are at risk of having…
Maryland Attorney General Settles with Mid Atlantic Processing
Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler announced that his Consumer Protection Division has entered into a settlement with MAP, LLC, a payment processing company formerly doing business as Mid Atlantic Processing, and Martin A. Taylor and Rony Natanzon, two officers of the company. The Division alleged that when Mid Atlantic Processing closed its Owings Mills office…
A failure to protect medical privacy
An editorial from the St. Petersburg Times: […] For more than half a year, strangers’ medical records jammed the home fax machine of Hudson resident Elizabeth Reed. The records described patients’ illnesses, lab results and prescription refill requests. The flow of records so disrupted the family’s home phone service that they resorted to using cell…
Check cashing business throws out documents with Social Security numbers
Denae D’Arcy reports: A man made a disturbing find in North Knoxville Thursday evening. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of documents with personal information were dumped behind a shopping center. […] When a 6 News crew arrived at Fast Cash in a shopping center at 5100 Clinton Highway, they found documents scattered around a dumpster behind the…
Improper disposal of hundreds of loan applications raises security concerns
Roman Gokhman of the Contra Costa Times reports: The financial and personal details of about 300 property loan applicants were compromised when confidential documents were mistakenly tossed into an outdoor waste bin. The paperwork, belonging to FHG Finance, a home loan business at 548 Contra Costa Boulevard, was discarded last week by a cleaning crew…