Kathleen Pender reports: A Bay Area woman named Kara got an upsetting call the morning of Oct. 22. The caller said she had found Kara’s 2007 tax return lying in a pile with hundreds of others on the ground in front of an abandoned Jackson Hewitt tax preparation office at 1734 Divisadero St. in San…
Category: Of Note
Breach in online payment system for Lawrence Memorial Hospital exposed up to 10,000 patients’ credit card or checking information
A public notice issued by Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Lawrence, Kansas that appeared on 6News (but not, apparently, on the hospital’s web site yet): On October 28, 2011, Lawrence Memorial Hospital learned that certain information maintained by Mid Continent Credit Services, Inc., d/b/a Blue Sky Credit, the hospital’s vendor for online patient bill-pay services, was inadvertently…
What does the Unisys Security Index really tell us about consumer responses to a data breach?
I’m going to post a press release from Unisys with a warning: never confuse what consumers say they will do with what they actually do. I’ll meet you on the other side of the release: Americans will go to great lengths to avoid identity theft, and many say they would take legal action against government…
In Hannaford Data Breach Case, First Circuit Says Card Replacement and ID Theft Insurance are Reasonable Mitigation Damages and Compensable–Anderson v. Hannaford Bros.
I’ve been reading a number of analyses and commentaries on the First Circuit’s ruling in the Hannaford Bros data breach case. While some people have described the ruling as a “potential game-changer,” Venkat Balasubramani provides a less optimistic analysis of what the decision may portend. As a recap, most of the plaintiffs’ claims have been…
Swedish password hacking scandal widens
A password hacking scandal which on Tuesday exposed login details of 90,000 Swedes, including several journalists and celebrities, has widened to include 180,000 users on nearly 60 websites. On Tuesday, information about more than 90,000 account passwords associated with the popular Swedish blogging site Bloggtoppen.se, was made public on the Twitter account of former Sweden…
Federal Appeals Court Holds Identity Theft Insurance/Credit Monitoring Costs Constitute “Damages” in Hannaford Breach Case
I posted something on this decision earlier today, but David Navetta has such a helpful analysis of the ruling that I wanted to mention it here. His commentary begins: In a significant development that could materially increase the liability risk associated with payment card security breaches (and personal data security breaches, in general), the U.S. Court…