Attorney Andy Serwin writes: California Penal Code Section 502 regulates unauthorized access to computers and computer networks and has implications for employers with employees in California. It is an offense if any person: knowingly accesses and without permission alters, damages, deletes, destroys, or otherwise uses any data, computer, computer system, or computer network in order…
Wake up calls: some still hitting the ‘snooze’ button
Robert Lemos of Dark Reading writes: The recently revealed abuse of insiders’ system privileges to commit fraud at Sprint could be a wake-up call for other enterprises to implement more stringent security practices, experts said this week. How many times have we seen a similar statement in the past five years? How many times have…
UK: East Lothian Council exposes cabbies’ personal info on web site
Kirsty Gibbins reports: East Lothian Council has apologised over a “serious” staff error which saw the personal details and previous convictions of taxi licence applicants published on the local authority’s website for two hours. The names, addresses, telephone numbers, driving history and criminal records of 12 applicants for either taxi driver or operator licences –…
New Zealand business owners dealing with data loss after earthquake
Roumiana Deltcheva writes: Companies and other agencies in Christchurch, New Zealand have been forced to deal with data loss as a result of the massive earthquake that struck the region last week. The earthquake, which was measured at higher than a 7 on the Richter scale caused damage to countless buildings, but the resulting data…
Fi: Data protection breached most often by nosy co-workers
The other day I posted something about data protection of healthcare records in Finland. That report indicated that breaches in the private healthcare sector were more common than in the public healthcare sector. Today’s Helsinki Times discusses the Ombudsman’s report and sheds some additional light on the nature and extent of breaches there: “Disputes in…
Class Claims Fox Hacks Into Computers
Karina Brown reports: A class action claims Fox Entertainment Group hacked into millions of computers to install “rogue, cookie-like tracking code” to snoop on people who visit Fox’s “American Idol” website. The class claims Fox and Clearspring Technologies committed crimes, circumvented privacy settings, and that the rogue devices reinstall themselves even if their victims can…