Paul Kelly reports: Red-faced bosses have apologised after papers outlining debts owed to a high-interest loan company by South Tynesiders were found discarded in the street. Liz Garlinge, 55, was leaving her home in Honeysuckle Avenue, West Harton, South Shields, when she saw the highly sensitive document lying on her drive. She was stunned to…
Category: Exposure
UK: KCOM caught in yet ANOTHER customer privacy snafu
Kelly Fiveash reports on several breaches at KCOM that had not been previously reported on this blog: Hull-based telco KCOM has coughed to another privacy clanger – this time admitting to wrongly sharing some of its customers’ email addresses with other subscribers. But it’s unclear whether the ISP has turned itself into the Information Commissioner’s…
NZ passport email gaffe latest in series of privacy slips
Adam Bennett reports: Hundreds of passport applicants have had their email addresses shared with other applicants in another government privacy botch-up. About 400 people applying online for passports were yesterday sent an email informing them of a system outage on the Department of Internal Affairs website. However, each recipient could see the email addresses –…
EMC notifying some employees after vendor error disclosed their names and SSNs to unauthorized parties
EMC is notifying employees after an unnamed vendor’s employee mistakenly sent out an Excel file with their personal information to parties not authorized to have their personal information. The error, which occurred on January 7, occurred because a quick glance at the file did not reveal the hidden fields containing their names, SSN, and old…
AU: Thousands of university academic union members made public
Julie Hare reports: The names and details of thousands of university academic union members have been accidentally made public. Lists of names, contact details and positions of the National Tertiary Education Union‘s members at five universities appear to have been collated with the intention of contacting each person to solicit funds to support a campaign…
Tyler Junior College data leak exposed housing applicants’ Social Security numbers and dates of birth
I’ve occasionally commented that consumers shouldn’t have to go to the media to get a breach or data leak addressed. Neither should students, but that’s what happened this week to Kierra Perry. Perry applied to Tyler Junior College in Texas. As part of the process, she also applied for housing and completed the background check…