State Farm Insurance reported (pdf) that when they discovered that an employee of a Tennessee agent had improperly disposed of trash containing customer information, they decided to notify all customers of the Tennessee agent. They report that as a consequence of the incident, the agent changed their procedures to use a secured waste container in…
Category: Exposure
Security breach exposes foster children’s data on the internet
On February 19, the National Center for Children and Families was alerted that some foster children’s personal information including Social Security numbers was exposed on the internet. An investigator hired by the agency tracked down the source of the breach: a family member of a former employee had inadvertently exposed the files via file-sharing software….
NY: Law firm’s clients’ files left in dumpsters on NYC street
Veronika Belenkaya of The NY Daily News reports that the law firm of Frenkel Lambert Weiss Weisman & Gordon cleaned house by leaving six dumpsters stuffed with confidential case files out on the street. The firm represents clients such as Wells Fargo Bank, Papa John’s Pizza, and others in the banking and insurance industries. According…
UK: Sensitive data on eBay computers, Part 2
Yesterday, I posted a story from BBC about how patient data from two hospitals was found on hard drives being sold to the public. That same study by BT and University of Glamorgan also found corporate data. Channel4 News in the UK summarizes some of what was found. To excerpt from their summary as it…
UK: HBOS postal error could breach data security law
Maryrose Fison of Citywire reports: HBOS has accidentally sent the details of a number of customers to a consumer who lodged a complaint. The bank sent an elderly customer what appears to be a screen shot from its customer relations department, giving the names of 11 customers and corresponding complaint numbers and dates.
UK: Patient data found on hard drives
From the BBC: Medical records, confidential letters and X-rays of patients in Lanarkshire have been found on second-hand computer hard drives. Two disks bought for a study on data security contained sensitive information from Monklands and Hairmyres hospitals. NHS Lanarkshire said the disks were disposed of in 2006 before it improved its data protection procedures….