The Oklahoma State Department of Health recently notified nearly 133,000 individuals that their personal and health information may have been compromised. The notification came after the theft of a department laptop.
The laptop and files contained personal and medical information including names, Social Security numbers and medical diagnoses. The laptop containing the files was stolen from an employee’s car on April 6.
The computer contained access to a database related to the Oklahoma Birth Defects Registry, which tracks birth defects statewide. The laptop also was used to record data from hospital medical records.
Health department officials said the information was password-protected and have offered to provide identity protection services to those who might have been affected by the theft.
This is just the greatest story about social media used for doing good EVER. A University of Georgia student was in bed when masked men invaded his home and tied up his 17-year-old sister and his grandmother.
The student wakes up and probably heard yelling and realized what was happening; apparently he didn’t have his phone so he took his laptop and hid in the attic. He logged into Facebook and wrote as a status message “someone please call 911, no phone, hiding in my house, robbery,”
CNN reports “His best friend called police, and sheriff’s deputies arrived, the men scattered as soon as police arrived. But they arrested one of the suspects while two, possibly three, others got away.
They quoted him as saying “Facebook was like the only thing where I knew I could reach someone instantly that was on chat.”
I’ve always recommended having a phone by the bed. I have both a l
15 Apr
Posted by admin as Identity Theft Advice
The U.S. Justice Department said it disabled a “massive fraud scheme” that infected more than 2 million computers worldwide with malicious software.
The department filed a civil complaint, criminal seizure warrants and issued a temporary restraining order in coordinated action with Microsoft Corp., which issued a software patch April 12 to correct a vulnerability in its Windows operating system. The vulnerability allowed the software to spread from one computer to another creating a so-called botnet.
The action was aimed at software called Coreflood, which collects passwords and financial information that was used by criminals, the Justice Department said in a statement yesterday. The group of computers infected with Coreflood, known as the Coreflood botnet, is suspected by the U.S. of operating for almost a decade and infecting more than 1.8 million computers in the U.S. alone.
Epsilon is a marketing company that has millions of emails on file of consumers who have made purchases or are affiliated with various banks, retailers, hotels etc. Epsilon sends over 40 billion emails out a year and was recently breached in a hack attack. Consumers are now receiving breach notifications from the likes of financial institutions such as Citigroup, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase, and hotels such as the Marriot and the Hilton.
The result of the breach will mean consumers will receive phishing emails that look like one of the legitimate entities breached but are in fact fake trying to trick the victim into entering their usernames and passwords or providing personal information such as credit cards or even Social Security numbers.
This is made possible by the fact that the consumer is accustomed to receiving similar emails on a regular basis and may not be able to tell the difference between a real or fake.
This breach should unquestionably heighten consumers’ awareness of their personal security in regards to their information security and also their physical security. C