Laura Crimaldi and Frank Quaratiello report: City inspectors in Boston have fined a Norwood man $2,500 after finding “thousands” of tax documents containing sensitive personal information in a Dumpster behind a dollar store in Hyde Park. Employees at a Family Dollar store at 1248 River St. discovered the unshredded tax documents yesterday when they...
DataBreaches.net obtained a copy of the letter sent by the Los Angeles Police Protective League to its members after the Los Angeles Police Department exposed confidential files concerning racial bias/profiling complaints against officers. The text of the letter follows: February 6, 2009 Dear Members and Friends: The League has been made aware of a...
Joel Rubin reports: The Los Angeles Police Commission violated its own strict privacy policy — and perhaps state law — on Friday, releasing a confidential report on the Internet that contained the names of hundreds of officers accused of racial profiling and other misconduct. The blunder, which police officials attributed to a clerical error,...
The Wisconsin Office of Privacy Protection has posted notice of a breach that occurred on January 15, 2009 when DOC Electric assets were auctioned off by M&I Bank and a local auction house. Apparently the computers and file cabinets contained personal information on DOC Electric employees who were employed from the start of the...
Tyler O’Neil reports: The presidents of Drake’s eight Greek fraternities were surprised to receive an e-mail in late January from the director of fraternity and sorority life with the grades of every fraternity man at Drake listed in an Excel spreadsheet. Drake’s four sorority presidents received similar e-mails with the complete listing of every...
Dallas Cook reports: Just a week after the Veterans Affairs Department agreed to pay $20 million to veterans for exposing them to possible identity theft in 2006 by losing sensitive personal information in a stolen laptop computer, a local veterans association mistakenly sent out personal information about disabled veterans in the mail. Gerry Sparks,...
Allison Suer reports: The Social Security numbers of 19 special events employees were leaked in an e-mail sent by another Ball State employee on Jan. 27, Tony Proudfoot, associate vice president for marketing and communications, said in a press release. The incident occurred because the 19 special events employees mistakenly put their Social Security...
Jason Kincaid reports: Wow. Something is seriously wrong at SpeedDate, the online dating site that throws strangers into whirlwind 3 minute dates. For at least 30 minutes this evening (and possibly more), passwords were totally optional. Type in a user name (no password needed), hit “Log In”, and you had access to every private...
John Burke reports: The personal and financial details of almost 1,200 customers of green energy firm Airtricity were posted on the company’s website for six weeks, The Sunday Business Post has learned. The Data Protection Commissioner, Billy Hawkes, has launched an investigation into the incident, which occurred in late November but was only accidentally...
Earlier this week, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company notified (pdf) the Maryland Attorney General’s Office that on January 6, it had inadvertently sent a report containing personal information to another client. The recipient immediately notified MassMutual of its error and reportedly shredded the document without further dissemination. The total number of individuals affected by...