A recap of breaches newly reported or updated last week on the main news site, PogoWasRight.org. For those looking for annual statistics: as of their last update on October 15, the Identity Theft Resource Center shows 531breaches reported in the U.S. for this year.   On a global level, Darkmarket was shut down and about 60 people were arrested.  Of particular note, the forum seems to have been a setup run by an FBI cybercrime agent.

Newly reported incidents in the U.S.:

• The Albany Police Department in Georgia is under investigation for breaking the law when sensitive police documents were tossed away in garbage bags behind a Dawson Road business without having been shredded first.
• A backup tape belonging to Regal Entertainment Group that contained personal data on an untold number of people was lost on August 29, 2008.
  
• Goodyear is offering identity-theft protection to nearly 570 city employees after a list of their Social Security numbers was stolen from the car of a staffer who had taken the data home.
• FEMA indicates that as many as 1,000 hurricane victims may have had their personal information exposed to a stranger due to an error by its mailing subcontractor.
• Personal data of Memphis City Schools students was on several computers that were stolen from the city school’s main office on October 7th.
• Al Walmer of Orlando and Dave Ungate of Dallas were arrested and charged with multiple counts of grand theft, criminal use of personal identification, and organized fraud involving theft of personal info from customers at Leesburg’s Tuffy’s Auto. Investigators are also looking into Walmer’s activities while he was employed at Casselberry’s Just Brakes.
• About 3,000 people are being notified by the Information Services Agency after the agency learned it had disclosed personal information about those people on the Indianapolis/Marion County website, including full names, birth dates and social security numbers.
• George Clayton of Manheim was employed by Union National Bank when he obtained information from three bank customers to get loans without their knowledge.
• Binghamton University discarded official old Binghamton university documents containing personal information on 56 people without shredding them.
• A man who Bellevue police believe is involved in the theft of more than 40 customer credit card accounts from Lansky’s Restaurant has been spotted on surveillance video.
• Officials at Olympic College are investigating how confidential student information was leaked and made available online for nearly a year.
• A security breach in an online computer system at Mary Washington Hospital exposed the private and medical information of over 800  patients.
• Crisfield High School has recalled hundreds of student identification cards after realizing that the Social Security numbers of some of students were printed on the cards. The incident was reportedly a result of an incorrect information file electronically sent to Lifetouch Photography, which manufactures the cards.
• Melkon Gabriyelyan pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges of defrauding Medicare by using patients’ Medicare identification numbers without their knowledge as owner and operator of TA Medical Supply.
• A file cabinet containing folders with personal information of home sales that linked back to Abstractors Title Company was discovered sitting by a dumpster.

Newly reported incidents elsewhere:

• Even the United Nations can have a privacy breach revealing personal information.
• In the U.K.: Justice Secretary Jack Straw has revealed that the Prison Service has fired four people since 2006 for the misuse of personal data.
• In Australia: Aussie Home Loans is under investigation by the Privacy Commission, after personal information related to 44 customers was found in a bin at one of its former offices.
• In Canada:  Ryerson violated Ontario privacy laws by leaving confidential documents in empty, unlocked offices in Kerr Hall South. Payroll stubs, student numbers, grades and exams along with staff tenure reports and resumes were scattered across the office space last used by the mechanical and industrial engineering faculty in late 2007. The rooms were found deserted last week with scattered boxes labelled “shred” and “confidential.”
• In New Zealand: Private eye Lew Proctor is investigating a burglary – but this time he’s the victim and files relating to his controversial investigation of Prime Minister Helen Clark and her husband Peter Davis have been stolen.
• In Indonesia: a  Ministry of Education database of students exposed information on at least 36 million students in Excel files containing names, date and place of birth and addresses.

Updates on previously reported breaches from here and abroad:

• The laptop stolen from a Deloitte employee also contained Vodafone employees’ surnames and initials, employee number and grade, as well as pensionable salary, earnings and contribution information. Other pension plans affected included BSkyB, Network Rail and Railway Pensions.
• A missing Ministry of Defence computer hard drive may contain personal details of as many as 1.7 million people who have inquired about joining the armed forces, much more than originally reported.
• Southwest Mississippi Community College officials said that the records of more than 7,000 students and former students were left vulnerable by last week’s computer breach, many more than originally reported.

To get all breach news reports, updates, and articles discussing breaches as they’re posted, subscribe to the Breaches RSS feed from PogoWasRight.org. To get this blog by RSS, subscribe to Dissent’s feed.

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