LPL Financial yet again has fallen prey to a technology blunder that placed private client information at risk.
An unencrypted portable hard drive was stolen from the car of an LPL representative Feb. 24, according to a letter sent last month by LPL to the attorney general of New Hampshire. The adviser, Christian D'Urso of StoneRidge Wealth Management in Beaverton, Ore., had one client in New Hampshire, the letter said.
The theft of two laptops containing sensitive health information about more than 5,000 patients in the John Muir hospital system is just one of a number of recent incidents involving stolen medical data.
John Muir Health on Monday began notifying 5,450 women that their health information may have been compromised after the laptops were stolen in February from John Muir's perinatal clinic in Walnut Creek. The laptops have never been recovered, but John Muir officials said there's been no evidence that the data, which was password protected but not encrypted, has been accessed.
Can employers read an employee's personal e-mail composed and sent via a corporate computer, and does the employer own that e-mail? Especially if it's an e-mail to a lawyer, which raises special questions of client-attorney privilege that invoke confidentiality?
It's been nearly 20 years since John Webb found out his identity had been stolen, a revelation that led to hours on the phone with credit card companies, banks and government agencies.
Today, Webb helps prosecute identity thieves, who are growing in number and advancing technologically, targeting everyone from senior citizens to large law firms. "It's the fastest-growing crime in the country in terms of volume," said Webb, an assistant U.S. attorney in Nashville. "It's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."
Police chiefs are under fire again after it was revealed today that the personal details of innocent motorists are being stored on a centralised database without their knowledge or permission.
The Sunday Times reported that up to 14 million photos of motorists are taken every day via a network of roadside cameras across the country and stored on a database in Hendon for at least two years.
Data on 3.3 million borrowers was stolen from a nonprofit company that helps with student loan financing.
The theft occurred on March 20 or 21 from the headquarters of Educational Credit Management Corp. (ECMC), which services loans when student borrowers enter bankruptcy. The data was contained on portable media, said the organization, which is a dedicated guaranty agency for Virginia, Oregon and Connecticut.
From Googling to e-mailing to social networking, every day millions of Americans unknowingly leave behind digital breadcrumbs while surfing the web, sometimes at the risk of compromising their anonymity. But while there’s technology available to stay anonymous in a time of surveillance, experts say policies and legislation won’t protect us from privacy invasion or being attacked in cyberspace.
Facebook is, by its nature, a social experience. But as the undisputed king of social networking expands ways for its users to interact, it's raising more questions about how much of their information is made available to people they don't know.
In some cases, users may not even realize it's happening.
One example is the hundreds of thousands of developers approved by Facebook to create games, quizzes and other applications. Some of those developers are able to access basic information about users after a Facebook friend has started using their application.
A website run by Durex to sell condoms in India has compromised the personal data of customers, with their names, addresses, contact numbers and order details reportedly leaked over the internet. The website admits there has been a problem but says customers' financial details have not been breached.
The site explains to customers, "We wish to inform our customers that on the website, limited transactional details could have been accessible for a restricted time window. These details did not include credit card or other financial information which remain secure at all times.
Research commissioned by internet security specialist Webroot has revealed that 37% of social networkers have blocked search engines from showing their profiles to people they do not know.
However, the Webroot study also revealed that 81% of users allow anyone who is part of their network to view their recent activities, while more than a quarter have not changed their profile's default privacy settings.
