The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) issued the following press release today: The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced today that it has fined D.A. Davidson & Co., of Great Falls, MT, $375,000 for its failure to protect confidential customer information by allowing an international crime group to improperly access and hack the confidential information…
Category: Of Note
Court to Notify Countrywide Customers About a Class Action Settlement Involving the Theft of Personal and Financial Data
A press release from the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky: A notification program began today in the United States, including Puerto Rico and recognized territories of the U.S., as ordered by the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky (the “Court”), to alert people who provided their…
How Identity Theft Is Like the Ford Pinto
Over on Concurring Opinions, Dan Solove describes a new paper by Chris Hoofnagle: Professor James Grimmelmann likes to shop at Kohl’s. So much so that he applied for credit at Kohl’s. And he got it. The problem is that James Grimmelmann didn’t really apply for anything. It was an identity thief. Grimmelmann was a participant…
Missing investment firm backup tapes contained account info
By letter to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office dated March 29, Proxima Alfa Investments’ attorney-in-fact Publio Vallejo reported that backup tapes containing account information had been stolen more than six months ago. A letter dated March 30 to the affected individual(s), states that the firm, which is in liquidation and had ceased operations mid-2009,…
Countrywide Sold Private Info, Class Claims
Tim Hull reports: Countrywide Financial employees stole and sold “tens of thousands, or millions” of customers’ personal financial information, invading their privacy and exposing them to identity theft, a class action claims in Ventura County Court, Calif. The class seeks to know, among other things, whether Countryside merely aided and abetted the theft and illegal…
The DOJ Criminal Division’s Laptop Computer Encryption Program and Practices – Audit Report
From the summary of findings in The Criminal Division’s Laptop Computer Encryption Program and Practices, Audit Report 10-23, March 2010: Criminal Division-Owned Laptop Computers Our review found that of the 40 laptops we tested for encryption software, 10 did not have encryption, and 9 of those 10 did not have Windows passwords enabled. All of…