Rochelle Olson reports: In late June, a 47-year-old woman checked herself into the 28-day alcohol treatment program at Hazelden in Center City, hoping to shake her years-long dependence on alcohol and maybe save her troubled marriage. The woman, identified in a Hennepin County District Court complaint only as L.B., said she entered the program while…
UK mobile phone data ‘was sold’ (Update 1)
Staff at one of the UK’s major mobile phone companies sold on millions of records from thousands of customers, the information watchdog says. Christopher Graham told the BBC that brokers had bought the data and sold it on to other phone firms, who called the customers as contracts neared expiry. The suspected trade emerged after…
HIMSS Survey: Business Associates not up to speed on HITECH
Today, HIMSS released a new report, 2009 HIMSS Analytics Report: Evaluating HITECH’s Impact on Healthcare Privacy and Security. Commissioned by ID Experts, HIMSS surveyed senior information technology (IT) executives, Chief Security Officers, Chief Medical Information Officers (CMIOs), Chief Information Security Officers and Chief Privacy Officers at hospitals throughout the United States.They also surveyed business associates…
Starbucks Data Breach Plaintiffs Try Their Luck in the Ninth Circuit
From The Short Names blog: A lost laptop computer containing the personal information of Starbucks employees prompted a class action lawsuit against Starbucks (in Washington). The lawsuit received some coverage (see, for example Bob McMillan here, and Starbucks Gossip here), but the trial court’s dismissal of the lawsuit received almost no coverage. (I mentioned the…
NE: Hackers Breach State Database
A hacker has broken into the Nebraska Worker’s Compensation database, prompting an FBI investigation and an effort to contact those who may be affected. Several thousand people could be affected by the breach, which was discovered last week when the state’s chief information officer noticed an unusual amount of Internet traffic traversing the Worker’s Compensation…
Update: Stolen BCBS hard drives had data on 2 million insured
This is a follow-up to an incident first reported here. Dennis Ferrier reports: One of Tennessee’s largest holders of personal information confirms that an October theft from a Chattanooga office affects about 2 million of its clients. Blue Cross Blue Shield said 68 computer hard drives that contained Social Security numbers and other sensitive information…