Catharine Tunney reports: The RCMP inadvertently sent an account of someone’s suicide attempt to the wrong email chain, leaving the details in the inboxes of more than 160 people, according to a report on the mishap. The email included the person’s name and date of birth, details of the suicide attempt, the injuries they sustained…
Category: Health Data
Penobscot Community Health Center notifying 13,000 patients about collection agency breach
Add Penobscot Community Health Center in Maine to the list of entities that had patients affected by the American Medical Collections Agency hack.They posted the following notice on their website: PCHC values the privacy and confidentiality of its patients’ information. Regrettably, this notice is regarding the American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA) incident, which you may…
Premera Blue Cross pays states $10 million over data breach (Updated)
Associated Press reports: Premera Blue Cross, the largest health insurer in the Pacific Northwest, has agreed to pay $10 million to 30 states following an investigation into a data breach that exposed confidential information on more than 10 million people across the country. The settlement, negotiated with the Washington attorney general’s office and filed in…
Anaesthetic devices ‘vulnerable to hackers’
Chris Baraniuk reports: A type of anaesthetic machine that has been used in NHS hospitals can be hacked and controlled from afar if left accessible on a hospital computer network, a cyber-security company says. A successful attacker would be able to change the amount of anaesthetic delivered to a patient, CyberMDX said. Alarms designed to…
DNA-testing service exposed thousands of customer records online
Nico Grant reports: DNA-testing service Vitagene Inc. left thousands of client health reports exposed online for years, the kind of incident that privacy advocates have warned about as gene testing has become increasingly popular. More than 3,000 user files remained accessible to the public on Amazon Web Services cloud-computer servers until July 1, when Vitagene…
Break-in at medical records centre behind discovery of personal files in Donegal park
There’s an update to a news story that was first reported in June. TheJournal.ie now reports that the HSE has admitted that there was a break-in involving storage containers at St. Conal’s medical facility close to Letterkenny University Hospital. According to the HSE, a lock on the container was smashed and an unknown number of…