A monetary penalty notice has been served by the Information Commissioner’s Office on North East Lincolnshire Council after the loss of an unencrypted USB drive containing personal and sensitive personal data relating to 286 special needs children. From the notice announcing the penalty: On 1 July 2011 an unencrypted USB memory stick containing personal and…
FL: Former Broward court clerk pleads guilty to ID theft
Tonya Alanez reports on yet another insider breach as part of a tax refund fraud ring in Florida. This one involves a Broward County court clerk: Porscha Kyles, 25, of Davie, pleaded guilty Monday to using her work computer to steal drivers’ names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and other personal information while working at the…
Update: Adobe Breach Impacted At Least 38 Million Users
Brian Krebs has updated his investigation into the Adobe hack that was originally reported to have affected 2.9 million customers. In a post on KrebsonSecurity.com today, Brian writes that at least 38 million are affected. But just this past weekend, AnonNews.org posted a huge file called “users.tar.gz” that appears to include more than 150 million username and…
Privacy watchdog investigates lost data from Toronto eye clinic
Alex Ballingall reports: Data storage sticks that contain personal and medical information on about 18,000 patients at Toronto Western Hospital’s Donald K. Johnson Eye Centre have gone missing, prompting an apology from the facility’s chief doctor and an investigation by the Ontario privacy watchdog. In an Oct. 17 letter to patients, ophthalmologist-in-chief Dr. Robert Devenyi said a…
Government ‘Mining’ Social Media for Information on Health Behavior
Elizabeth Harrington reports: The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is “mining” Facebook and Twitter to improve its social media footprint and to assess how Tweets can be used as “change-agents” for health behaviors. The NLM, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will have software installed on government computers that will…
After investigative report reveals database compromise, Dun & Bradstreet notifies consumers (updated)
Last month, Brian Krebs revealed that SSNDOB, an identity theft service, operated a botnet that tapped into some of the biggest databases in the country to get the information they sold. One of those firms was Dun & Bradstreet: Two other compromised systems were located inside the networks of Dun & Bradstreet, a Short Hills,…