In June 2021, DataBreaches reported that Vikas Singla had been indicted on charges relating to a 2018 cyberattack on Gwinnett Medical Center. At the time of the alleged attack, Singla was the chief operating officer of a metro-Atlanta network security company. He was charged with 18 counts of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission announces decision in Facebook “Data Scraping” Inquiry
Press release: The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has today announced the conclusion to an inquiry into Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (MPIL), data controller of the “Facebook” social media network, imposing a fine of €265 million and a range of corrective measures. The DPC commenced this inquiry on 14 April 2021, on foot of media reports…
WhatsApp dismisses report of alleged data leak containing phone numbers of nearly 3 million Hongkongers
Danny Mok reports: WhatsApp on Sunday dismissed a media report claiming that a database containing the mobile phone numbers of nearly 500 million users, including almost 3 million from Hong Kong, was leaked and put up for sale, saying it had found no evidence of a data breach. The article by Cybernews, a research-based online publication,…
In New Hampshire, school technology directors collaborate to protect student data
Eileen O’Grady reports that New Hampshire schools have pooled resources to hire someone who will negotiate with tech and app vendors to make sure that the contracts protect the schools and that contracts aren’t suddenly changed on them, etc. For the past three years, an alliance of school technology directors called the New Hampshire Student…
Massive Twitter data breach was far worse than reported, reveal security researchers
Ben Lovejoy reports: A massive Twitter data breach last year, exposing more than five million phone numbers and email addresses, was worse than initially reported. We’ve been shown evidence that the same security vulnerability was exploited by multiple bad actors, and the hacked data has been offered for sale on the dark web by several sources. It had previously been…
Community Health Network notifies patients of meta pixel breach
Community Health Network in Indiana has become the latest healthcare entity to notify patients that their protected health information was transmitted via trackers on their website from Google and Meta. Their FAQ page attempts to explain it in basic English and does a good job, but there’s no getting around this: Any individual who visited…