http://www.databreaches.net/?p=9282
MA: Data breaches affect million state residents
January 3, 2010 by admin Filed under Breach Incidents, Education Sector, Exposure, Financial Sector, Paper, Theft
Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe had an article in today’s paper about the 807 breach notifications the state received over a two-year period. The article referenced some breaches not previously reported in the media:
Smaller incidents include the theft in October of three laptop computers from the Springfield accounting firm Moriarty & Primack. The computers held personal data from more than 1,600 state residents, including more than 1,100 employees and retirees of Smith College in Northampton, one of the accounting firm’s clients.
[...]
Eastern Bank Corp. of Lynn disclosed in September that it mailed financial data regarding about 2,500 customers to the wrong addresses. Joe Bartolotta, a spokesman for the bank, said it welcomed the law requiring such disclosures.
Of the 807 reported incidents, 60% were due to criminal acts, while 40% were attributed to negligence. [I think she is being over-generous here. Failure to encrypt and failure to block employee downloads to laptops IS negligence. Bob]
Hopefully the OSF DataLossDB project will obtain this past year’s reports from Massachusetts to add to their collection of primary sources. OSF had to pay for the reports under a Freedom of Information request and donations by supporters or those who value having more data available for research and analysis can help support their work. Credant stepped up to the plate. Will you or your company?
[From the article:
One million Massachusetts residents - or 1 in 6 people - have had their credit card numbers, medical records, or other personal information leaked or stolen over the past two years, according to records provided to the Globe by state officials.
Every now and then an AG gets truly creative. The telecomms will fight this, because they stole this money fair and square.
DC Sues AT&T For Unclaimed Phone Minutes
Posted by timothy on Sunday January 03, @07:57AM from the sheila-dixon's-mistake-was-subtlety dept.
Suki I submits news that Washington, D.C.'s attorney general has filed suit (District of Columbia vs. AT&T Corp, Superior Court of the District of Columbia), claiming the city has the right, through laws applying to unclaimed property, to unused calling-card balances held in the name of D.C. residents.
"The suit claims that AT&T should turn over unused balances on the calling cards of consumers whose last known address was in Washington, D.C. and have not used the calling card for three years 'AT&T's prepaid calling cards must be treated as unclaimed property under district law,' the attorney general's office said in a statement. ... [That sum] represents some 5 to 20 percent of the total balances purchased by consumers who use the calling cards. States and municipalities have often similarly used unclaimed property laws, known as escheat laws, to claim ownership of unused retail gift card balances." Suki I links also to Reason Magazine's coverage.
Automating Big Brother
New Zealand Cyber Spies Win New Powers
Posted by timothy on Saturday January 02, @07:12PM from the mmm-new-powers dept.
caeos writes
"New cyber-monitoring measures have been quietly introduced in New Zealand giving police and Security Intelligence Service officers the power to monitor all aspects of someone's online life. The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand. The New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS or SIS) is an intelligence agency of the New Zealand government."
[From the article:
Police association vice-president Stuart Mills said the new capabilities are required because criminals were using new technologies to communicate, and that people who weren't committing criminal offences had little to fear.
...While US civil liberties groups unsuccessfully fought these surveillance capabilities being used on US citizens, the FBI was lobbying other governments to adopt them. [Then they can point to these laws and say “You're not going to allow these pitiful third world countries to have better tools that the US are you?” Bob]
For anyone learning programming.
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/ideone-online-ide/
Ideone: Online IDE & Debugging Tool
By Srikanth AD on Dec. 26th, 2009
Ideone is an online IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and debugging tool which enables users to share and run code online. It’s like a pastebin designed specifically for programmers and developers. All the code snippets run on Ideone and can be accessed conveniently via hash links.
Supports around 40 programming languages.
Optional toggle on/off syntax highlighting.
Edit and download source code files.
Check out public code snippets executed by other users.
Free for use, no sign up required.
Similar tools: Ecoder, TextSnip, CodeFetch and CodePaste.
Humor. Sometimes research isn't easy...
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