John Oates reports: ACS:Law has been fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office for failing to follow data protection law. The one-man law firm, which has since ceased trading, won infamy for using IP numbers to accuse people of illegal file-sharing. Victims received a letter offering to settle the claims rather than go to court. But…
Category: Of Note
FTC Settles Charges Against Ceridian and Lookout Over 2009 Data Breaches
Two companies that maintain large amounts of sensitive information about the employees of their business customers, including Social Security numbers, have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they failed to employ reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect the data, in violation of federal law. Among other things, the settlement orders require the…
SOE hacked: 12,700 credit card numbers and 24.6 million accounts may have been compromised
Togikagi writes: As we previously reported, all Sony Online Entertainment services, games, forums and web sites went offline this morning as a result of the recent Playstation Network intrusion. SOE just issued an announcement, and it appears that the personal information of players may have been compromised. Here are the details straight from SOE: “Our…
Sony game user accounts breached; 77 mil. may be affected
Looks like we have a new addition to the Top 10 list of all-time biggest breaches. Taro Koyano of Yomiuri Shimbun reports: The personal information of about 77 million users worldwide of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation and Qriocity online services may have been leaked, the company said Tuesday. Sony said its PlayStation Network services for online…
Sealed Records Exposed In Major Court Gaffe
In a shocking failure to protect sensitive details about dozens of ongoing criminal investigations, federal officials somehow allowed confidential information about sealed cases to be publicly accessible via the court system’s online lookup service, The Smoking Gun has learned. Over the past nine months, details of 40 separate sealed court applications filed by federal prosecutors…
Verizon-USSS 2011 data breach investigations report released – what do they know that we don’t?
The annual report based on breaches investigated by Verizon and the U.S. Secret Service is out. On first reading of the report and the available media coverage, the big headline seems to be that while the number of records or data lost is down significantly, the number of breaches is significantly up – and more…