Alan Gustafson reports: Sloppy handling of confidential records by a state agency in Salem left people’s names, Social Security numbers, ages and addresses exposed in an open recycling bin outdoors. The blunder by the Housing and Community Services agency put low-income, elderly and disabled residents at risk of becoming targets of identity theft or other…
Category: U.S.
NH: Mayor’s e-mail used for 650,000 messages
Manchester – An estimated 650,000 of Mayor Frank Guinta’s closest friends received messages sent from his city e-mail account Wednesday night and early Thanksgiving Day. Well, maybe not his friends. Someone hacked the mayor’s City Hall account and used it to send the 650,000 messages. Guinta yesterday said he found out about the messaging on…
NH: Pathology lab doctors say WDH punishing them for reporting privacy breaches by rogue employee
Adam D. Krauss reports on a case of what seems to involve patient record tampering without any clear financial or other motivation. In a fairly detailed story, Krauss discusses some of both the privacy and data security issues: Two doctors who run the pathology lab at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital say they’ll soon be out of a…
PA: Students’ social security numbers compromised
Kevin Cirilli reports: A Penn State professor’s grade book from 2001 to 2004 that contained 303 students’ social security numbers, among other personal information, was found to be compromised by a computer virus in the last couple of months. Penn State Security Operations and Services (SOS) discovered the incident and immediately took the personal information…
Hackers steal credit-card numbers from restaurant customers
Theodore Decker reports: Diners who frequent a popular Downtown restaurant should review their charge-card statements because hackers broke into its computer system to loot debit- and credit-card numbers, police said today. Between 30 and 50 people have reported fraudulent charges on their accounts, and Columbus detectives said that anyone who used a charge card at…
Email goof exposes Sea Ray Boats employee data
On October 21, an employee of Sea Ray Boats unintentionally sent an email to 698 dealership personnel that contained the names, contact information, and Social Security numbers of 341 of the 698 employees. The company realized its mistake, and within an hour, sent out another email asking recipients to destroy the first email. Despite the…