Darren Pauli reports: Desperate companies are buying off data thieves and extortionists to recover stolen data, according to experts. They claim it is “common” for some businesses operating in Australia to pay ransoms to hackers and disgruntled employees to re-secure sensitive information or prevent illicit corporate activities from becoming public. Law firm MMLC Group managing…
Category: Non-U.S.
Shell employee contact data breach affects over 100,000
The following was posted by John Donavan and attributed to Royal Dutch Shell (“Shell”) Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer Richard Wiseman: Colleagues, I am writing to inform you of an incident involving misuse of company data. It has become clear recently that the Global Address List, containing contact information of everyone in Shell and some…
UK: Fears of ID fraud after Revenue data error
Nicola Hodges reports: Revenue & Customs has sent the names, addresses and National Insurance numbers of 2,200 claimants to the wrong people in the latest Government data bungle. The blunder involves child benefit letters to families whose children are 16, asking them to confirm that the youngsters are still studying. But some letters have contained…
London moves to buy stolen bank data
Vanessa Houlder reports: Britain has approached Germany to buy data stolen from a Swiss bank in an effort to discover details of accounts hidden in the country by potential UK tax evaders. […] A number of German politicians, as well as the Swiss government, have criticised Berlin’s decision to purchase the stolen data. Although the…
Swiss Data Affair Could Pay Off Handsomely for Germany
The extent of tax evasion by a number of German citizens with Swiss bank accounts appears to be far wider than originally thought. As the German government prepares to fork out a considerable sum for a CD with information about Germans suspected of dodging taxes, a newspaper reports that tax authorities could recover up to…
UK: 5,400 medical files stolen in Downpatrick break-in
Some might not consider this a breach because of the encryption: Medical records of 5,400 patients have been stolen from a doctors’ surgery in Downpatrick. The break-in happened at the surgery of Drs Hannah and McGoldrick at Pound Lane over the Christmas period. They were in two computer hard disk drives and several DVDs containing…