Susan Landau writes: For decades the theft of private individuals’ data has been treated as an annoyance. Activist state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission have pursued cases, but U.S. laws fail to treat theft of personal data as a serious crime in itself. The indictment detailing Russian activity during the 2016 presidential campaign…
Category: Of Note
EDUCAUSE Challenges the US DOE’s Guidance on Data Breach Reporting
Kathleen Dion of Robinson & Cole writes: On January 30, 2018, EDUCAUSE, a higher education technology association, submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of Education describing concerns that it had with the Federal Student Aid (“FSA”) ability to protect federal student financial aid data. EDUCAUSE’s members include IT professionals from over 1,800 colleges and…
UK: Former council worker fined for sharing personal information about schoolchildren and parents via Snapchat
From the what-the-HELL-were-they-thinking department: A former local authority education worker who illegally shared personal information about schoolchildren and their parents has been prosecuted. Samira Bouzkraoui, 24, took a screenshot of a council spreadsheet concerning children and their eligibility for free school meals before sending it to the estranged parent of one of the pupils via…
Supreme Court denies CareFirst’s petition to review data breach case
Evan Sweeney reports: The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an appeal filed by CareFirst to review a case stemming from a 2014 data breach. The Supreme Court issued its decision on Tuesday, eliminating the possibility, for now, that the court will weigh in on questions about whether the possibility of harm from a data breach is…
Phishing schemes net hackers millions of dollars from Fortune 500
Charlie Osborne reports: Fortune 500 companies are losing millions of dollars due to new and sophisticated phishing scams conducted by cyberattackers, IBM has discovered. On Wednesday, researchers from IBM’s X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS) team said the Business Email Compromise (BEC) scheme is currently active and is successfully targeting Accounts Payable (AP) teams…
Half A Million People Don’t Know Criminals Stole Their Identities to Get Jobs
Jack Corrigan reports: A programming error kept the IRS from notifying hundreds of thousands of identity theft victims about criminals using their Social Security numbers to get themselves jobs in 2017, according to an internal investigation. Last year, more than half a million Americans had their identities used by others to get hired, but only…