The FTC has charged two businesses [complaint 1 | complaint 2] with illegally exposing the sensitive personal information of thousands of consumers by allowing peer to peer file-sharing software to be installed on their corporate computer systems. Settlements with the debt collection business and auto dealer will bar misrepresentations about their privacy, security, confidentiality, and integrity of…
DocuSign user information found through Google search (updated)
Oops. AGBeat reports: As the world’s largest electronic signature platform, DocuSign says that they have over 6 million unique signers processing millions of transactions per year and that they are “trusted by more people, more companies, more times than any other electronic signature provider in the world.” In just one search query in particular, we uncovered 4,450…
Millions of LinkedIn passwords posted online; company’s response criticized
The online professional networking website LinkedIn has confirmed that “some” of its users’ passwords were stolen when it was hacked today, but the person responsible says it’s almost 6.5 million. In a blog post earlier this morning, the LinkedIn team posted: “We can confirm that some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn…
Last.fm and eHarmony passwords stolen (updated)
The Last.fm music site and the eHarmony dating service said some user passwords were stolen, a day after another online company, LinkedIn, confirmed a security breach. “We are currently investigating the leak of some Last.fm user passwords,” the London-based company, which recommends music to listeners, said today on its website. “As a precautionary measure, we’re…
City laptop with residents’ data stolen from library
The New Haven Register reports on a laptop theft that occurred on May 23: A laptop used by an Elderly Services Specialist to input data for the Rent Rebate program was stolen recently from the Mitchell Branch Library, but there is no reason to believe anyone has accessed the data stored on the laptop, city…
Does a Data Breach in the U.S. Require Notification in Europe?
Paul Van den Buick writes: The European legal framework on the protection of personal data (Directive 95/46/Ec) is acknowledged as one of the strictest in the world. This tendency seems to be confirmed by the new draft regulation on the protection of personal data revealed by the European Commission in January 2012, which, once adopted,…