The provincial government is responding to another privacy breach. The personal information of 78 people was included in error in written correspondence mailed to another person. The breach involved applicants to the province’s Heating Oil Storage Tank Replacement Assistance Program. The information collected from applicants for this program includes their name, spouse’s name, Social Insurance…
Category: Exposure
MA: Patients’ files from at least four hospitals left at public dump
Liz Kowalczyk reports that four Massachusetts community hospitals – Milford, Holyoke, Carney, and Milton – are investigating how tens of thousands of patient health records, some containing Social Security numbers and sensitive medical diagnoses, ended up in a pile described as 20 feet long by 20 feet wide at Georgetown Transfer Station. Read more of…
Online data breaches plague Metro Nashville
Nate Rau reports: Metro government continues to mistakenly release the sensitive personal information of residents nearly three years after the Social Security numbers of 330,000 Nashville voters were put at risk. Five separate incidents across various city government offices since then have exposed Nashvillians to potential identity theft. The most recent mistake, which involved the…
Ben & Jerry’s security glitch exposes personal details
Claire Woffenden reports: Ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s has apologised after an embarrassing security blunder exposed the names and addresses of more than 2,500 online customers. The mistake was discovered by Web User reader Julee de Jong after a simple search for her name on search engine Google. One of the top results for…
AU: Westfield customer details exposed in data breach
Brett Winterford reports: The details of customers that shop at Westfield Bondi Junction have been exposed on an internet site after a direct marketing email mishap on Monday night. Westfield has warned subscribers to its mailing list that customer details were visible on the web for eight hours. In a note sent to customers, Westfield…
InPsych app is a privacy threat – psychologist
Psychologist John Grohol of Psych Central posts this warning on his site: I’m off to attend the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) in San Diego today, but before I go, I do have two APA-related news items to post. The first is about the APA’s social networking application it deployed for this…