Eric Katz reports: Customs and Border Protection released the personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, of thousands of individuals to dozens of federal agencies during an investigation of cheating on polygraph tests. CBP violated some aspects of the Privacy Act in distributing the information across government, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found in…
Category: Exposure
Ukrainian nationalist hackers blamed for leaking personal information of journalists
Fil Warwick reports: Hundreds of Ukrainian journalists and foreign correspondents woke up one August morning to find their contact information – and even passport details – published online as part of a leak blamed on hackers. It’s the second leak to target Ukraine-based journalists in the last four months. The contents of the first leak –…
TalkTalk loses appeal against £1,000 data breach penalty
From the way-to-keep-that-bad-press-going dept.: ITPro reports: TalkTalk has lost an appeal against a £1,000 fine imposed as a result of the data breach it suffered last year. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined the telco for not reporting the breach within 24 hours after discovering it, but TalkTalk appealed, taking the case to an Information…
Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho Public Notice of Email Error
Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho posted this notice on their web site: On June 28, 2016, some emails notifying individuals of an online portal were inadvertently sent to the wrong addresses. This caused individuals to receive another person’s email, which included the intended recipient’s first and last name. There was no other…
NL: Data leak put thousands of Utrecht residents’ info on streets
Oof. Janene Pieters reports: The personal data of thousands of Utrecht residents was available for anyone to look at due to a so-called data leak at the municipality of Utrecht earlier this year, the Telegraaf reports based on documents received through the Freedom of Information Act. In total 316 pages of names with corresponding social…
AU: OAIC accepts undertaking from ARC on Optus customer data breach
Corinne Riechert reports a follow-up to a breach previously noted on this site: The Australian Privacy Commissioner has accepted an enforceable undertaking from ARC Mercantile following a breach of personal customer data at the end of last year, which occurred when an ARC employee posted a spreadsheet of customers owing money to Optus on Freelancer.com. Read more…