Erin Cargile and Hal Nelson of KXAN report that “dozens of boxes with thousands of patients’ personal information and medical histories” and Social Security numbers were dumped in a recycling bin outside a Goodwill store in Cedar Park at Parmer Lane and FM 1431. So far, no word on who the responsible party or parties…
Category: Exposure
Pfizer: Oops, an employee threw out your data
After a lull in security incidents following a string of breaches between 2006 and 2008, Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer recently reported another security incident. According to a notification (pdf) filed by their attorneys, a Pfizer employee “inadvertently left a backup hard drive in a box that was discarded in the trash on March 26, 2009. Because…
Woman Finds Credit Card Statements Unprotected Online
From TheIndyChannel.com: A major credit card company is investigating how more than a hundreds statements were made available online after an Indiana woman alerted them to the problem. Constance Wilson had logged in to pay her Aspire Visa card bill when she instantly had access to 120 other statements from people in Indiana and 31…
D.C. Mistakenly Sends Out 2,400 Students’ Personal Data
Bill Turque of The Washington Post reports one of those email attachment errors that frankly, have been all too common. How about routinely sending a test email before sending the real one to check to see what people will be receiving? Would that be so darned hard to do? The District agency that handles college…
TN: Improper records disposal leads to notification of clients
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…
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….