The Home Office has launched an “urgent investigation” after two brothers found thousands of scraps of passports, chequebooks and prescription pads in a punchbag [Note: in the U.S., punching bag]. Simon and Richard Coe discovered personal data, including signatures and photos, torn up into thousands of small pieces. Much of the personal information contained in…
Category: Non-U.S.
Stolen laptop contained playgroup’s information
Children’s details stored on a Lincoln play group’s laptop are still missing after the console was stolen. Information about youngsters who attend Abbey Play Group, based at Croft Street Community Centre off Monks Road, was on the computer, a court heard. Thief Darren Philip David Jude, 21, stole the laptop from his girlfriend’s home. He…
Employees sacked for ID card data breach
The database in question holds data on 92 million people in the U.K. About 200,000 people have access to it. If they cannot adequately secure the database from misuse by employees, well……. Nine local authority workers have been sacked after illegally accessing personal details of the public held on the government’s national identity database. In…
‘Secret’ Swedish police data sold by criminals
Supposedly secret police lists containing details about Sweden’s most dangerous criminals are up for sale across the country among members of the Swedish underworld. The documents have apparently been leaked from the Stockholm police’s Criminal Investigation Department. The lists, known as the Alcatraz List and Nova List, contain a wide-range of information about Sweden’s toughest…
Medical records found in nurse’s yard
Hundreds of highly confidential medical documents including a parents’ plea for help for her mentally ill daughter have been found dumped in a nurse’s backyard. The documents, found in see-through recycle bags in easy reach of passers-by, contained sensitive information about patients from across South London including names, addresses and whether they had arthritis, bunions,…
Methinks he might protest too much
As someone who routinely makes snarky pronouncements about breaches, I was actually impressed by how Toronto Hydro handled their recent data breach. Yet some people were strongly critical. The facts of the breach, as I currently understand them are that: 179,000 Toronto Hydro customer account numbers were illegally accessed in the company’s e-billing system. Toronto…