A few months ago I blogged about a co-anchor at a television station who was accused of getting into his co-anchor’s email and passing information from the messages along to news outlets.
I was interested to see a CNN report today, “Fired anchor pleads guilty to e-mail snooping” that followed up on this story. Larry Mendte reportedly admitted to accessing Alycia Lane’s emails, in her 3 home and work accounts, over 500 times over a 2-year period!
Okay, why was he able to so easily get into her email accounts…3 OF THEM!…over a period of 2 years?! Wasn’t there any security applied to these email systems?
Some possibilities…
Archive for the ‘Privacy Incidents’ Category
TV Anchor Confesses To Snooping His Co-Anchor’s 3 Email Accounts For 2 Years!
Friday, August 22nd, 2008Company Uses Negotiated Checks For Packing Material!
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Not much surprises me any more with regard to some of the silly things that organizations do with printed PII that put the involved individuals at risk.
However, I was surprised when I watched an ABC News report this morning…
Insider Threat Examples: HIPAA Violations Go UnPenalized In Iowa
Sunday, August 17th, 2008When I got my Sunday Des Moines Register out of the orange box across the road this morning, the front page headline leaped out at me, “Medical privacy law fails to stop snooping.”
In one of the incidents described, a woman was incredibly embarrassed and humiliated after all the intimate details about an operation she had on her uterus, including her full name, that were in her doctor’s files were apparently published in marketing material…
40+ Million Credit Cards Stolen Using Wardriving…This Is Nothing New, Folks!
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008Okay, lots and LOTS has already been written about the DoJ press release yesterday, “Retail Hacking Ring Charged for Stealing and Distributing Credit and Debit Card Numbers from Major U.S. Retailers: More Than 40 Million Credit and Debit Card Numbers Stolen.”
But, I still want to put a few thoughts out about this…
40+ Million Credit Cards Stolen Using Wardriving…This Is Nothing New, Folks!
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008Okay, lots and LOTS has already been written about the DoJ press release yesterday, “Retail Hacking Ring Charged for Stealing and Distributing Credit and Debit Card Numbers from Major U.S. Retailers: More Than 40 Million Credit and Debit Card Numbers Stolen.”
But, I still want to put a few thoughts out about this…
Texas EZPawn Throws Away Its Security Promises and Customers’ Privacy and Gets A Handed A Significant Penalty
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008Well, here is yet another company that had a nasty habit of just throwing papers containing their customers’ personally identifiable information (PII) into publicly accessible trash cans.
On June 24 a Texas judge handed down a civil penalty of $600,000 against Texas EZPawn for tossing their customer PII, including Social Security numbers, bank account information, driver’s license numbers, date of birth, and other identifying information, into their trash cans without first irreversibly and completely shredding the papers. You can see an example of the types of records found in the trash in the court documents.
Six Ways Organizations Can Lessen Mobile Computing Risks
Friday, June 20th, 2008Geesh, every single day there is at least one news report about a stolen or lost mobile (laptop, notebook, PDA, Blackberry, etc.) computer! Today one of the reports was about a laptop computer, containing cleartext information about 11,000 hospital patients, that was stolen from a doctor’s home in Staffordshire, U.K.
A couple of days ago I posted the first section from the second article in my “IT Compliance in Realtime” journal issue for June.
Here’s the second section from that article…
Insider Threat Example: Coworkers Accessing Other Coworkers’ Email Messages
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008Back in the mid-1990’s, a middle manager knew that the print queue messages for all the emails in the large organization were viewable in clear text; all you had to know was which printer queue to open. He would lurk in the print queues each day, all day, for all the printers all the other middle managers, and executives, used, and he would copy all the email messages he found that could be “advantageous” to his career. He amazed a lot of people by always seeming to know what was going on before anyone else did.
I was reminded of this particular mole-manager as I just read a news story, “Philly News Anchor Target in FBI Probe: FBI Investigates Anchor in Suspected Hacking of Fired Co-Anchor’s E-mail”
Internal Threat Example: Lending Tree Privacy Breach And Civil Suit
Sunday, June 1st, 2008Last month (May 2008…yes, it is June already!) Lending Tree got slapped with a civil suit alleging their personnel allowed mortgage lenders access to customer’s personally identifiable information (PII) and other confidential information.
The suit charges that Lending Tree did not have appropriate or adequate information safeguards in place, resulting in the employees using names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, income information, and assorted other personal information, to market their own mortgage loans to the LendingTree customers.
The class-action lawsuit, (this is from a subscription site) represents all Lending Tree customers who submitted loan request forms to the company between Jan. 1 2006 and May 1, 2008.
From the case file…
