Way back when, I had written myself a note about a case in which five Indiana residents had been indicted on charges that related to an ID fraud conspiracy involving theft of patient information. According to the press release in December 2013 from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Indiana, the five individuals were indicted November…
Category: Health Data
Camp for children with serious diseases notifies campers and volunteers of potential breach
The Painted Turtle is a non-profit organization in California that operates a camp for children with life-threatening diseases and their families, and does so each year, free of charge to the families. As part of their process, prospective campers and their families, as well as volunteers, submit an online application. For campers and their families,…
AL: State Trial Underway for Flowers Hospital Identity Thief
There’s a follow-up to a case involving theft of Flowers Hospital patient data by an employee for tax refund fraud. The data theft was first disclosed in April 2014, and reportedly occurred between June, 2013 and February, 2014. Within weeks, a potential class action lawsuit was filed. Over the summer, the hospital moved to dismiss for…
A breach, a complaint and how the NZ Privacy Commissioner helped
From the job-well-done dept.: New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner, John Edwards, writes: Late last year, one of my senior investigating officers came to me with a file she’d been working on for quite a while. She was convinced the facts supported a finding of an “interference with privacy”, that is, a breach of the privacy principles,…
Is Anthem screwing dependents of former members on breach notification? (update 2: No)
Update 2 (March 12). Because Anthem gave me the run-around instead of a straightforward answer, I asked a mainstream reporter from a large news outlet to pose the question to them. He managed to get an answer: Anthem is notifying all impacted members. The letters are being mailed as we speak. Because of the volume…
MI: Indictments issued in Blue Cross Blue Shield identity theft case
Dustin Blitchok reports on another insider breach at a HIPAA-covered entity: Eleven suspects were indicted on multiple identity theft-related charges Tuesday by the Detroit district attorney’s office in a case that accuses them of stealing the personal information of Blue Cross Blue Shield subscribers and using it to apply for credit and purchase merchandise in…