Lorri Helfand of St. Petersburg Times reports: A Largo area marketing firm has agreed to pay $350,000 to settle a complaint by the Florida Attorney General’s Office that the firm obtained stolen consumer information and did not take proper steps to ensure data was acquired legitimately. Although VICI Marketing LLC agreed to the settlement filed…
Category: U.S.
FairPoint probes on security breach
FairPoint Communications Inc. says a worker’s failure to abide by security precautions caused a portable data-storage device containing employee information to disappear from an undisclosed FairPoint office. The device contained information for all current FairPoint employees and some former employees, or about 4,400 individuals in total. Such data may have included names, home addresses and…
FL: Fired Hernando County deputy charged with identity theft over e-mails
Joel Anderson reports: The e-mails referred to one of the highest-ranking officers at the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office as “racist.” They alleged discriminatory treatment against some of the deputies. They were supposedly coming from Sgt. George Smith. However, the e-mails were all the work of an online thief, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Former Deputy…
HHS offers health IT privacy guidelines
Brian Robinson reports in Government Health IT: The Health and Human Services Department has begun overhauling the privacy and security rules that govern personal health information, which is considered vital to attempts by Congress and the Obama administration to broaden the adoption of electronic health records. HHS published guidance on April 17 that outlines the…
Wal-Mart employee data compromised; 48,000 affected
Well, I haven’t found anything more on this from any news source and it’s always odd to find out about a U.S. breach from a non-U.S. source, but International Supermarkets is reporting that: It has come to light that Wal-Mart has suffered a breach in its staff data system due to a former employee leaving…
IN: Personal Documents Found Strewn Along Rural Road
6News reports that thousands of documents containing personal information — including Social Security numbers and financial information — were found on a rural road. The files appear to have come from DFS Capital Funding.