A federal grand jury has indicted the following five Maryland defendants on fraud and aggravated identity theft charges in connection with a scheme to use stolen hospital patient identity information to open fraudulent credit accounts and make purchases on “instant credit” at retail stores in Maryland: Michael Allen, age 34, of Baltimore, Jasmine Amber Smith,…
Category: U.S.
FL: Parents fear identity theft by Keep the Faith Ministries
Sofia Santana reports: They say they provided Social Security numbers, copies of utility bills, pay stubs and credit card information to a group called Keep the Faith Ministries. Low-income parents who claim they were swindled by the group, which promised to subsidized their child care expenses, now worry they and their children also may be…
States unable to protect citizens’ personal, health data from cyberthieves
Byron Acohido writes: This should come as no surprise. State government agencies aren’t devoting nearly enough resources to protect citizens’ sensitive data from hackers and data thieves. Some 49 out of 50 states report that a lack of budget is crippling efforts to manage cybersecurity effectively. One state chose not to participate. That’s the upshot…
Alabama regulator probing release of Morgan Keegan client data
Roy L. Williams reports: Alabama Securities Commission chief Joe Borg said he will release the findings of an internal investigation into how someone in his office mistakenly gave a Birmingham trial lawyer a computer disk containing confidential information on 18,500 clients of Morgan Keegan & Co. […] Borg’s office mistakenly sent Campbell a disk that…
University of Florida notifies former students of privacy breach (update)
From the UF web site: University of Florida officials have notified 239 former students that their names, addresses and Social Security numbers were part of a web-accessible archive of computer science class information created in 2003 by a faculty member. Discovered last month, the website was removed immediately from the server, which is housed in…
Ohio State University averages 10 data breaches per year
Jenny Fogle reports: With six data breaches in the past year, Ohio State officials are urging students and faculty to help keep private information safe.”Ohio State has been tracking [breaches] for the past three years,” said Charles Morrow-Jones, director of IT Security. “We’ve been averaging about 10 per year and virtually all of them involve…