Data Leakage News

Sixteen people, including three bank employees and several students, have been indicted in a U.S. district court in a bank fraud and identity theft case that involved 37 banks and almost $300,000.

If you want to gain access to the cell-phone records of virtually any American, all you need is their telephone number and a spare $100 dollars on your credit card. The rest you can leave up to a host of Internet sites that provide you with a list of calls made and received.

Some consumers may be dismayed to find their Social Security numbers printed on unsolicited packages from H&R Block, the result of a recent labeling blunder at the company.

The packages, which H&R Block mailed in December, contained free copies of the company's tax preparation software, TaxCut. By mistake, some of the packages also displayed recipients' Social Security numbers, which were embedded in 47-digit tracking codes above mailing labels.

Fraudsters used the personal bank details of thousands of civil servants to make bogus claims for disability benefits worth tens of millions of pounds, the Sunday Telegraph has learned.

Officials at HM Revenue & Customs yesterday confirmed that the Revenue had linked the massive rise in payments of a valuable disability benefit with the theft of the payroll data of 13,000 Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) employees last summer.

Thousands of documents containing the names, addresses, credit card details, telephone numbers and the signatures of guests at one of Britain's most famous hotels ended up in a rubbish skip in what has been dubbed "the biggest field day for identity fraudsters ever".

The owner of the Grand Hotel in Brighton was forced to issue an apology after staff threw out huge quantities of registration forms and credit card slips that included the details of several politicians.

One of the oldest banks in the U.S. state of Connecticut became the latest U.S. financial firm to lose confidential data after a tape containing information for around 90,000 customers and employees went missing while in transit to a credit reporting bureau.

Security and law enforcement professionals are appalled that their personal information was leaked by Guidance Software, a security software and training company they say should have known better than to leave an unencrypted database exposed on the Internet.

The identities of more than 50,000 customers of major Bahamas resort Atlantis have been exposed to possible identity fraud following the theft of personal information from the hotel, the owners said.

Kerzner International Ltd., owner of the luxury 2,300-room Atlantis resort on Paradise Island, revealed details of the data theft in a document filed with the Bahamas Securities and Exchange Commission.

Information stolen included names, addresses, credit card details, social security numbers, drivers license numbers and bank account data, the filing said.

A medical office has warned about 700 patients that their personal data may have been compromised by the theft of six computers.

Authorities said the office of Squirrel Hill Family Medicine, which is owned by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, was broken into over the Dec. 17-18 weekend.

One of the six computers taken contained a file with names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth for patients, but not their medical conditions, UPMC spokeswoman Jane Duffield said.

A new year and an old story: Americans fall prey to data theft. A new year and another old story: Congress does nothing about it, not even requiring companies to inform consumers of the breaches.

According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 2005 saw more than 100 reported breaches involving the personal data of more than 50 million Americans. Most of the breaches occurred after Congress got riled at ChoicePoint in February and swore action to protect consumers.