From the are-you-absolutely-sure-you’re-not-dead dept. Alice Lipowicz reports: The Social Security Administration publicly made available the names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information on more than 36,000 people from May 2007 to April 2010 despite being warned about the privacy risks, according to a report from SSA’s Office of the Inspector General….
WordPress Hack Puts Government and Commercial Clients at Risk
Jessica Herrera-Flanigan reports: Continuing the trend in recent weeks of high-profile sites being attacked, the open source blog program WordPress announced that it was hacked on Wednesday and the hackers potentially made off with “anything.” In a note posted on the WordPress webblog, founder Matt Mullenweg stated “Tough note to communicate today: Automattic had a…
Ca: School board loses memory stick with employee data
CBC reports: The private information of thousands of Edmonton Public School Board employees has been missing for more than three weeks, CBC News has learned.In a massive privacy breach, a USB memory stick containing information, including resumes and employment records of about 7,000 employees, was lost on March 22. The stick was used by a…
MN hospital loses box with patient records
Maura Lerner of the Star Tribune reports: In February, staffers at Fairview Health Services in Minneapolis packed up about 1,200 patient records for shipping to a new office across town. Unfortunately, no one at Fairview has seen the box since. This week, officials began notifying patients that their health and billing records — including names,…
Identity theft hits doctor’s office, banks
Guillermo Contreras reports: A San Antonio man pleaded guilty this week to possessing numerous medical files stolen from an area doctor, while a local woman was indicted separately for using stolen identifying information in a bank fraud scam. Douglas Allen Ewert, 28, entered the guilty plea Tuesday to fraud related to stolen identification documents after…
IRS Hit With Massive Theft Of Nonprofits’ Identities
William P. Barrett writes: Someone has hijacked the tax identity of more than 2,300 tiny or defunct nonprofits, apparently taking advantage of a hole in a new electronic Internal Revenue Service filing system to list the same person as a charitable official at the same mail box drop in Las Vegas. The charities, most of…