Council chiefs have apologised after the National Insurance numbers of thousands of pension holders were disclosed. The NI numbers were printed in the address fields of 6,600 pension newsletters from Northumberland County Council and were clearly visible through the cellophane of the envelopes. Staff at the third-party mailing company used to send out the newsletters…
Category: Non-U.S.
UK: Hack attack targets 4.3 million online CVs
Stewart Mitchell reports: The personal details of 4.3 million job seekers may have been compromised in a “concerted and sophisticated” hack attack on Trinity Mirror’s recruitment sites. According to Trinity Mirror, no actual CV details were exposed during the attack on sites such as Planet Recruit and JobSearch, even though the company believes email address…
UK: 1000 data breaches reported to the ICO
The Information Commissioner’s Office issued a press release and summary analysis of breaches: With the number of breaches involving people’s personal information reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reaching 1000, the privacy watchdog is urging organisations to minimise the risk of mistakes. Staff need simple procedures on how to handle personal information with appropriate…
Edmonton travel agency owner charged in scam
Cigdem Iltan reports: The owner of a southeast Edmonton travel agency has been charged with allegedly using stored credit card data to fraudulently take $50,000 from his customers. Gurmeet Singh Mankoo, Payless Travel’s owner, has been charged with a series of alleged frauds that took place at the business between late 2009 and early 2010….
HMRC mails wrong private info to 50,000 19,000 taxpayers
John Oates reports on another black eye for HMRC: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs apologised today for sending out private information to 50,000 tax credit recipients. One taxpayer who contacted The Register said: “We received our tax credit notice with our National Insurance details but on the back were two strangers’ work, childcare and pay…
Asian firms can do more to protect data
Vivian Yeo reports: Despite greater awareness among businesses in Asia on the need to protect data assets, security breaches seem to be on the increase across the region over the past year. Claudio Scarabello, Verizon Business’ senior global product manager for security product marketing, said in an e-mail interview that data breach incidents appeared “to…