A man who bid on seven file cabinets at a storage auction discovered dozens of files inside with personal and financial information that belonged to Breakwater Mortgage Corporation. The firm had gone out of business last year. When contacted, they claimed that no one had been able to access the files after the company went…
Category: Paper
California Dept. of Real Estate seeks to yank Seaview Financial’s license
Jeff Overley of the Orange County Register reports that the state Department of Real Estate wants to suspend or revoke the license of mortgage broker Seaview Financial for dumping 24 cartons containing confidential and detailed financial records on 350 customers in an elementary school’s bins (see photos). The owner, Paul Henry Reed, had denied wrongdoing…
Binghamton U. exploring criminal charges against student reporters
If you’re standing in a public space in a state university building, and you look up and wonder what a door from what appears to be a mezzanine leads to, and you climb up to find out, open an unmarked door that has tape over the lock, and then take photographs of records containing personal…
UK: List of health service security blunders exposed
Continuing what appears to be an increasing trend in the UK media to use freedom of information requests to obtain breach reports, Echo found that there had been 34 incidents involving patient data being lost or mislaid by health service staff in Gloucestershire since December 2007. The paper notes that the same request was sent…
Bits ‘n Pieces
In the justice system: A string of identity thefts spanning seven states has resulted in the arrest of two suspects in Wisconsin. More. As a follow-up to a story reported previously, Scottsdale police arrested nine people who allegedly ran an ID theft ring that involved stealing customer data from local businesses including the Henry Brown…
Florida couple fed up over medical fax flap
Laura Kadechka reports on a Tampa couple who have been received misdirected faxes containing pharmacy and medical information for over two years, despite their having contacted the pharmacies and medical clinics to tell them of the error. The doctor who had had their phone number had changed it two years ago. Not wholly surprising, when…