Angela Delli Santi reports: Taxpayers’ Social Security numbers, confidential child abuse reports and personnel reviews of New Jersey workers nearly went to the highest bidder after the state sent surplus computers out for auction. Nearly 80 percent of surplus computers in a comptroller’s office sample had not been scrubbed of data before being shipped to…
Category: Of Note
MetLife fined and ordered to provide credit monitoring to consumers after breach
WREX follows up on a breach they exposed in January 2010: An insurance company faces a fine and other stipulations for improperly throwing away people’s private insurance documents in Loves Park.MetLife has been ordered to provide credit fraud protection for everyone affected by the mistake and has to pay a $75,000 fine to the State…
UK: Prison for Four Who Ran Ghostmarket.net
Jeremy Kirk reports the final chapter in a case first noted on this blog last August and updated in November: Four men who ran what U.K. police say was the largest English-language criminal forum for selling stolen credit card numbers and the tools to steal data were imprisoned for a combined total of more than…
German Government Adopts Security Breach Notification Requirement in Telecommunications Act
On March 2, 2011, the German Federal government adopted a draft law revising certain sector-specific data protection provisions in the German Telecommunications Act. The draft law addresses the implementation of data breach notification requirements in the European e-Privacy Directive by introducing a breach notification obligation for telecommunications companies. According to the proposal, telecommunications companies must…
Mass. General to pay $1M to settle privacy claims
Massachusetts General Hospital and its physicians organization have agreed to pay the federal government $1,000,000 to settle claims related to a worker leaving personal health documents on the subway. The hospital also agreed to develop a comprehensive new privacy policy to prevent patient information from being compromised in the future, and to provide training to…
SpamIt, Glavmed Pharmacy Networks Exposed
Brian Krebs writes: An organized crime group thought to include individuals responsible for the notorious Storm and Waledac worms generated more than $150 million promoting rogue online pharmacies via spam and hacking, according to data obtained by KrebsOnSecurity.com. In June 2010, an anonymous source using the assumed name “Despduck” began an e-mail correspondence with a key anti-spam…