Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reports: This story is part of When Spies Come Home, a Motherboard series about powerful surveillance software ordinary people use to spy on their loved ones. A company that sells consumer-grade software that lets customers spy on other people’s calls, messages, and anything they do on their cell phones left more than 95,000…
Category: Of Note
FEMA exposed personal information of 2.3 million disaster victims
Caroline Linton reports: FEMA mistakenly exposed personal information, including addresses and bank account information, of 2.3 million disaster victims, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General said in a report released Friday. The breach occurred because FEMA did not ensure a private contractor only received information it required to perform its official duties, the report said….
NZ: Privacy Bill avoids notification fatigue
Tim Murphy reports: MPs have revised privacy legislation to avoid a risk of ‘notification fatigue’ in which holders of data would be forced to advise the public of even minor data breaches. Parliament’s justice select committee has raised the threshold in the Privacy Bill for when mandatory notifications to the Privacy Commissioner and affected individuals would…
OH: 13-year-old student accused of hacking teacher’s account, making hit list of fellow students
WSYX/WTTE reports: A 13-year-old student at the Columbus City Preparatory School for Boys is under investigation after he reportedly used a teacher’s credentials to get into the district’s system, created a website with information about his fellow students, and made threats. Columbus Police say they received a report on March 15th that the student had…
Facebook Stored Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords in Plain Text for Years
Brian Krebs reports: Hundreds of millions of Facebook users had their account passwords stored in plain text and searchable by thousands of Facebook employees — in some cases going back to 2012, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. Facebook says an ongoing investigation has so far found no indication that employees have abused access to this data. Read…
Settlement in 2015 UCLA Health Data Breach Class Action
Top Class Actions reports: A $7.5 million class action settlement has been reached, resolving claims that a July 2015 data breach exposed personal information stored by the UCLA Health Network. The UCLA Health class action settlement provides $2 million to pay for unreimbursed loss claims and preventative measure claims. In addition, UCLA Heath has agreed…