Across a variety of personal data there is also the most sensitive intimate information, such as medical diagnoses, information about income and relationships, and contact details, which can seriously harm people and violate their privacy, often resulting in dramatic incidents or even tragedies.
This is a digest of sensitive personal data leaks, prepared by InfoWatch Analytics Center.
Last summer, as part of a scandalous incident, Amy Docker, a 23-year-old administrator’s assistant at a UK National Health Service (NHS) hospital, allegedly accessed personal information of her boyfriend’s ex Candice Collier, including her phone number and home address, and then sent her a string of abusive texts. As a result of an investigation conducted by the hospital into Docker over the “inappropriate access” to personal medical records, the woman was fired.
Urban Massage, a popular London-based massage startup, leaked its entire customer database by leaving its Google-hosted database online without a password, allowing anyone to read hundreds of thousands of customer and staff records for at least a few weeks. The leaked records contained not only user names, phone numbers, home and email addresses, but also account blocks for fraudulent behavior and allegations of sexual misconduct by clients with many client details included in every complaint.
Grindr, a hookup app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people, shared its users’ HIV status and location data with its analytics partners. The leaked information could then have been used for targeted advertising. Due to an outcry caused by the breach, Grindr said it would stop sharing confidential information with analysts.
A secretary of Sheva Enaim women’s health clinic in Beersheba (Israel) and two women who worked for Hidabroot, a religious outreach organization, were indicted for infringement of privacy. The clinic secretary was suspected of passing information regarding women about to have abortions to Hidabroot, which then contacted several of those women and attempted to talk them out of the procedure, offering financial and emotional support.
