And this may be the winning entry for “Email Gaffe of the Week:” An employee error compromised thousands of people’s personal information, including social security numbers, the Georgia Department of Labor said. A spreadsheet containing the names, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers and email addresses of 4,457 people who filed for unemployment in Georgia was…
Category: Government Sector
Former state of Minnesota worker stole IDs of 269 public employees, charges say
Emily Gurnon reports that investigators have found the names and SSN of 269 public employees in the home of a former employee of the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Roxanne Kay Deflorin “may have been a source of some of the stolen identities” used by three other women charged in the case, the complaint said….
Update on Department of Energy hack (updated)
More details are available about the Department of Energy hack that occurred in July. Mathew J. Schwartz reports: According to an email sent to all DOE employees on Aug. 29, information on 2,532 current employees, 3,172 former employees and seven employees on leave was stolen in the breach, which occurred in July. At the time, DOE…
Texas Comptroller Ducks Deposition Over Data Breach
Jess Davis reports: A Texas appeals court on Thursday blocked a civil rights advocacy group from deposing the state comptroller about a 2010 data breach that published online personal information about millions of Texans, saying the agency has governmental immunity. Read more on Law360.com (sub. required).
UK: Aberdeen City Council fined £100,000 after sensitive information exposed on the Internet
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced that a monetary penalty notice has been served on Aberdeen City Council after inadequate homeworking arrangements led to 39 pages of personal data being uploaded onto the internet by a Council employee. The council has been fined £100,000. The incident occurred in November 2011, after a home working employee…
Hill AFB employee personal info improperly transmitted
Mitch Shaw reports: More than 500 Hill Air Force Base employees had sensitive personal information compromised after another base employee improperly transmitted the information to an unprotected email address. In early July, a base administrative employee was working with data that contained the names and Social Security numbers of hundreds of base employees. The employee,…