Morgan Smith reports: A disk holding the Social Security numbers of every student in the Laredo Independent School District — a total of 24,903 — has gone missing, according to the Texas Education Agency. TEA spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman said the agency first became aware of the situation in January, when officials with the University of…
Lone Star Business Solutions exposes thousands of employees and applicants to ID theft
Let the naming, shaming, and flaming begin! A call to FactFinder 12 leads to the discovery of thousands of personal documents dumped in a Wichita alley. Lone Star Business Solutions, a third party payroll and human resource company for Lone Star restaurants, dumped the documents in a large dumpster behind its building in downtown Wichita….
Congressman tackles HIPAA Catch-22 to help medical ID theft victims
Last week, I posted a news item about how medical ID theft victims were getting victimized twice – once by the criminal and once by those hospitals that interpret HIPAA as barring them from showing patients their own records if they contain information on another patient – even if that patient is the ID thief….
Former hospital administrator who fired two whistleblower nurses gets jail time for his abuse of official capacity
It’s nice to see a small measure of justice occasionally. Back in 2009, I covered a report about two nurses, subsequently identified as Anne Mitchell, RN and Vickilyn Galle, RN, who were facing jail time for reporting a physician, Dr. Rolando Arafiles, to the Texas Medical Board. According to investigators with the Attorney General’s Office,…
OR: Soldier’s personal records surface at Goodwill store
How exactly did a binder full of military records end up at a Goodwill store in Hillsboro? That’s the question Amanda Wade asked herself during a recent trip to the store. She stumbled upon a binder that was loaded with dozens of military records for a man named Timothy Mallams. It had everything an ID…
ICO confirms another data breach fine in the offing
Dan Worth reports: Information commissioner Christopher Graham has revealed that the watchdog is to fine a fifth organisation for breaching the Data Protection Act. Graham said at a Westminster Forum event on Tuesday that the issuing of another fine will remind data controllers that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is not a toothless regulator. Read…