Press release from the FTC, followed by my comments: A company that provides medical transcription services has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its inadequate data security measures unfairly exposed the personal information of thousands of consumers on the open Internet, in some instances including consumers’ medical histories and examination notes. In its complaint…
Category: Business Sector
Aflac discloses insider breach involving customers’ Social Security numbers (updated)
The Continental American Insurance Company (Aflac) is notifying some customers that a former temporary employee improperly accessed customer data, including names and Social Security numbers. Although the firm has no indication of any misuse of the data, affected customers are being offered a year of free credit-monitoring services through ProtectMyID. You can read the January…
Hotel Franchise Firm White Lodging Investigates Breach
And another shoe drops. Brian Krebs reports: White Lodging, a company that maintains hotel franchises under nationwide brands including Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton and Westin appears to have suffered a data breach that exposed credit and debit card information on thousands of guests throughout much of 2013, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Earlier this month, multiple sources in the banking industry began sharing data…
FL: Plant City Woman Sentenced to Prison in Stolen Identity Refund Fraud Scheme
U.S. District Judge Susan C. Bucklew has sentenced Jennifer Meier Hunt to two years and six months in federal prison for committing stolen identity refund fraud. As part of her sentence, the court also entered a forfeiture money judgment in the amount of $97,238, representing the proceeds of the tax fraud. Hunt pleaded guilty to…
Analyst sees Target data breach costs topping $1 billion
Tom Webb reports: Two months into the Target security breach, fraud is turning up on 10 percent to 15 percent of the stolen card accounts, a security specialist says. Based on that brisk level of criminal activity, one Wall Street analyst estimates that perhaps 5 million of the 40 million stolen credit and debit cards…
Mass hack attack on Yahoo Mail accounts prompts password reset
I noted a lot of tweets yesterday about Yahoo email being hacked and couldn’t figure out what the surprise was – after all, I had already reported that problem on January 27. In any event, it’s now been confirmed, I guess. Dan Goodin reports: Yahoo said it is resetting passwords for some of its e-mail…