The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is reminding charities that personal information must be handled securely after finding the Alzheimer’s Society in breach of the Data Protection Act. The Alzheimer’s Society reported three separate breaches involving personal information to the ICO during 2009. Several unencrypted laptops were stolen during a burglary at their office in Cardiff…
Category: Non-U.S.
UK: NHS appraisal toolkit yanked offline
John Leyden reports: The UK’s Department of Health has taken the highly unusual step of suddenly taking a doctors’ appraisal website offline for three weeks over concerns it was vulnerable to hacking attacks. The NHS Appraisal Toolkit was taken down on Tuesday (9 February) and is not expected to return until 3 March. The site…
Orange overshares in bcc blunder
Bill Ray reports: Orange accidentally shared the email addresses of more than 300 customers yesterday during a bid to find out what they think of the company. The email, passed on to us by several readers, suggests the recipient might like to reply with their thoughts about how customers keep in touch with the operator,…
NZ: ACC says sorry for botched mailout
Rachel Tiffen reports: ACC [Accident Compensation Corporation] has apologised “unreservedly” to thousands of businesses and individuals whose private information about workplace injuries was sent to the wrong companies. The corporation sends out 15,000 individual reports each month and yesterday 2000 were mailed to the wrong businesses. In a statement issued last night, general manager Dr…
Za: Hijacked IDs are fuelling spending sprees
Identity theft has increased phenomenally in South Africa, reaching such a level that a major retailer is thinking about installing photo-recognition or fingerprint scanners in its stores. Johan Kok, chief operating officer of JD Group, said identity theft had become much more sophisticated in the past five years. Their group is part of the South…
Nl: Notary puts clients passports online
Karin Spaink provides an English summary of a recent breach reported in Dutch media: Veilingnotaris.nl tries to list all online real estate auctions. Apparently their site is badly protected: Google has indexed quite some client information, including passport copies, notary deeds, registry information etcetera. The published information concerned both recent and old auctions. Internet Notaries,…