Are you free to use data unintentionally disclosed to you in a data breach? Adam Bennett reports that the New Zealand Earthquake Commission (EQC) has gone to court to block the use of data on 98,000 claims erroneously emailed to someone last month: The Earthquake Commission has taken out a court injunction against the insurance…
Category: Government Sector
UK: Pembrokeshire child sex abuse files ‘released in error’
The BBC reports: Allegations that Pembrokeshire council wrongly disclosed sensitive reports about 10 child sex abuse victims to another victim are being investigated. It is claimed the person wanted information about himself, but received private details about others. Read more on BBC. The story was initially reported earlier today in Western Mail, which provides more…
Vernon Township ordered to pay court costs after suing hapless recipients of employees’ SSN
Remember that ridiculous lawsuit by Vernon Township against individuals to whom it had accidentally released employees’ Social Security numbers? There’s an update. Jessica Masulli Reyes reports: The individuals who received the Social Security numbers of 119 Vernon employees were ordered by a judge to sign certification saying that the confidential information was deleted and not disseminated….
Hackers got personal info from state computers
I’m having one of those “WTH???” moments. Read this report from Associated Press: Some state employees and vendors who do business with Alabama are being notified that their personal information was accessed when hackers infiltrated a state computer system. The state Department of Homeland Security announced today that it was making the notifications, but wouldn’t…
19 Derbyshire police workers caught abusing force files
Nineteen members of staff at Derbyshire police have breached data protection rules in the last three years by accessing information they were not allowed to see. One officer searched the force database to find information logged about his relationship with an illegal immigrant. He resigned before misconduct proceedings could take place Read more from the…
Bullying is not an appropriate breach response
I recently posted what I considered to a stupid lawsuit – one where the party that had a breach sued the hapless recipients of the breached information. Today I found another example of bullying and threats in response to a breach. It seems that an employee of Tooele County made an error years ago and…