A major investigation has been launched after a county council uploaded personal information online, including birth certificates, bank account details and drivers’ licences. The Data Protection Commissioner is investigating the breach by Meath County Council, who only removed the sensitive data when it was notified by a member of the public. However, last night the…
Category: Non-U.S.
UK: Confidential Kirklees Council files on computer stolen by burglars
Confidential files on 25 people were on a computer stolen from the home of a Kirklees Council employee. The laptop theft was one of several incidents in which private data was lost by the authority. The council also lost a paper file containing children’s social services information, it emerged in new details revealed by the…
UK: Target practice?
Is Local Government being disproportionately targeted by the Information Commissioner? Jonathan Baines looks at the evidence. On 1 July 2011 the Information Commissioner (IC), Christopher Graham, issued a strongly-worded press release, which announced the publication of five undertakings he had required NHS Trusts to sign, following serious breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). In…
German police hacked, suspect tracking data stolen
Darren Paul reports on another hack revealed last week: Usernames, passwords, and coordinates stolen in data haul. Hackers have broken into the German Federal Police and swiped location data used to track suspects. The attack launched by the left-wing n0-N4m3 Cr3w hacking group compromised a server used by the country’s customs service. It then published…
2 held over Baidu personal info leak
Zha Minjie reports in The Shanghai Daily: Shanghai police said yesterday that two suspects have been caught for allegedly revealing online the personal information of more than 1,700 local apartment owners in a residential complex in the Pudong New Area. Access to the leaked data has now been blocked from Baidu’s database, according to police….
UK: Banks face more privacy complaints from customers than any other group
Gerri Peev: Banks have attracted more customer complaints than any other group over allegations of mishandling sensitive information, the privacy watchdog reveals today. Lenders routinely lost, released or wrongly recorded personal data, the Information Commissioner warned in his annual report which detailed 603 complaints. But the true scale of privacy and data breaches could be…