Mike Archibold reports: The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department has pulled a page from its Web site that allowed people to access county records on residential septic tanks. Department spokeswoman Joby Winans said Tuesday that the shutdown was prompted by the discovery of a homeowner’s credit card number on one of the 3 million documents posted…
Category: Exposure
UK: EPPING FOREST: Fraud fears after council blunder
Here’s another breach reported last month in the U.K., reported by Daniel Binns: An embarrassing blunder by the district council has led to confidential information about men applying for taxi licences being published on its website, in a move which the Government says could put them at risk of identity theft. National insurance numbers, addresses,…
Wells Fargo says “system error” to blame for mailing mixup
Bill O’Driscoll reports: When a Wells Fargo Bank statement showed up in Janet Levesque’s mail, the Reno address was right but the name wasn’t hers. She opened it to find her correct account number, but fearing for the safety of her identity, she said she called the bank headquarters in California and was told some…
Warnings issued after possible security breach
Sasha Aslanian reports: The state of Minnesota has directed all of its agencies to stop using a Texas company state officials hired to verify the identities of new employees. A state official told MPR News that it is notifying some 500 employees that their personal data — including names, dates of birth and Social Security…
UK: Action taken after tenants’ personal files go missing
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has found the Orbit Heart of England Housing Association to be in breach of the Data Protection Act after 57 paper files containing personal data went missing during an office move. Forty-two of the files were recovered in full, but 15 which contain a significant amount of personal data relating…
Update: Notre Dame U. breach affected 24,000 (updated)
As an update on a Notre Dame University breach involving exposure of personal information including SSN on the web, Sarah Mervosh of The Observer reports that 24,000 individuals, mostly employees but some students who worked for the university, were affected by the incident. Reactions to the university’s handling of the breach and notification varied, depending…