University of Florida notifies 11,000 students that Social Security numbers were posted online
June 10, 2008
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The University of Florida is sending letters to more than 11,000 current and former students to notify them that their Social Security numbers, names and addresses were accidentally posted online.
University officials said Tuesday that the privacy breach was recently discovered during a routine systems audit.
The information became available when former student employees of the Office for Academic Support and Institutional Service, or OASIS, program created online records of students participating in the program between 2003 and 2005. The information has been removed.
School officials said the notification letters were being sent to about 11,300 students whose information is believed to have been compromised, but they were unable to find contact information for about 570 people.
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Utah hospital billing records from over 2 million patients stolen
June 10, 2008
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Billing records of 2.2 million patients at the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics were stolen from a vehicle after a courier failed to immediately take them to a storage center, authorities said Tuesday.
The records, described only as backup information tapes, contained Social Security numbers of 1.3 million people treated at the university over the last 16 years, said Lorris Betz, senior vice president for health sciences. MORE
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1st Source swaps out ATM cards after breach
June 10, 2008
1st Source Bank is replacing ATM cards this month for all its account holders after cyber-thieves accessed an unknown amount of debit-related data, a bank official said Wednesday.
The South Bend-based bank has not received any reports of suspicious activity, however, said James Seitz, senior vice president of consumer and electronic banking
Betz said people would be notified by a letter at a cost of $500,000 just for stamps and envelopes. The hospital also pledged free credit monitoring.
The records were in a gray metal box. The courier, whose name was not released, picked them up in his Ford Explorer on June 1. But instead of driving directly to a storage center, he worked a second job and then went home, Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder said.
The next day, he discovered that someone had broken into his Ford Explorer outside his Kearns home and taken the box, Winder said.
Authorities declined to say how easy or difficult it would be to read the records. They refused to describe the format or whether the information was on a disk. The sheriff believes the thief probably thought the box contained money. MORE
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Card details stolen in web hack
June 10, 2008
The credit card details of up to 38,000 customers of clothing firm Cotton Traders were stolen following a hack of its website, BBC News has learned.
The firm has not confirmed the size of the breach but it has acknowledged the site was attacked early this year.
It said Barclaycard was contacted as soon as it learned of the attack, and most cards were stopped in January.
The payment industry's trade body said it was serious because hackers accessed details for "card not present" fraud. MORE
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USC warns personal data may be on stolen computer
June 9, 2008
The University of South Carolina is warning about 7,000 faculty, staff and students that some of their personal information was on a desktop computer stolen from an office at the business school.
Russ McKinney, the university spokesman, said that over the Memorial Day weekend, several items were stolen from an office in the Moore School of Business.
"Among the items was a desktop computer belonging to Deputy Dean Dr. Scott Koerwer," McKinney said. "As a result of the computer being stolen, we feel it is possible that some personally identifiable data could have been compromised."
McKinney said university officials have no evidence anyone's personal information was accessed.
"We feel the responsible thing for us to do is to notify those persons whose data was contained in the computer, and advise them of the fact, and share with them some useful steps they may want to take for additional protection," McKinney said.
He said the university is notifying about 130 faculty and staff at the Moore School, and just under 7,000 students who took business courses in the last academic year. McKinney said the university's Division of Law Enforcement and Safety and Office of Information Technology are investigating the matter. Deputy Dean Koerwer circulated a letter to students dated June 6 that suggested some steps they might take to protect themselves from identity theft. MORE
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ETSU says stolen computer could lead to identity theft
June 8, 2008
AP: East Tennessee State University has sent a letter to 6,200 people whose identities could be compromised by the theft of a desktop computer.
The letter, dated Monday and provided to the Johnson City Press by the father of a graduate who received one, says the computer is password protected and files cannot be easily accessed. But it says there is a small possibility that the information could be compromised.
Those who received the letter are asked to notify one of the three major credit bureaus and place a fraud alert on their files.
University Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Bert C. Bach said ETSU has set up a Web site with procedures for preventing or dealing with identity theft.
Bach said the missing computer was stolen from a secured area on May 17. ETSU officials are investigating.
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See the first week of June "reported" data breaches at the end of this earlier blog entry: An Analysis of Identity Theft Through The Victims Eyes
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