NEWS & UPDATES

Your Money Rights Limited was found guilty of breaching data protection principles by reportedly making a record 146 million nuisance calls pushing people to make PPI claims.

Based in Carmarthenshire, the company statistically made enough calls to contact every woman, man and child in the U.K. twice over.

Anyone reading this has probably experienced at least half a dozen in the past year. Recipients were less than amused by the numerous calls and complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office over the unsolicited calls, saying the recorded messages made them feel “harassed and threatened”.
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Newkirk Products Inc, a company who provides ID cards for health insurance plans, revealed a data breach took place last year that allowed unauthorised access to a server that contained member information.

The server that was hacked reportedly contained the data for an estimated 3.3 million members.

Now, this is the kind of breach that can be very dangerous several years after the event. With cybercriminals known to hold on to information for future use, any victim of a data breach needs to be wary.
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Google has been locking horns with the U.S federal government once again over the storage of data abroad.

It’s believed Google lost their third dispute in court over the matter, and lengthy legal battles remain at large.

The disputes arose when Google challenged the validity of a search warrant for looking through company data that was stored abroad. This asks the question about who has jurisdiction for information held overseas, and therefore which laws apply to the stored data.
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Last October, the Australian Red Cross Blood Service had 1.74 GB of backup data compromised. This reportedly included 1.3 million rows and 645 tables containing personal information belonging to some 550,000 online blood donor applications.

The following details were reportedly made publicly available: Name; Gender; Postal address; Email address; Gender; Phone number; Date of Birth; Country of Birth; Blood Type; Type of donation.

Other information relating to blood donations like donor eligibility answers and appointments were also revealed. Some of this can certainly be classed as very sensitive information indeed.
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U.S. District Judge, Lucy Koh, has said Yahoo must face huge lawsuits brought against them on behalf of over a billion individuals who had their personal data compromised in the well-reported Yahoo breaches.

Verizon communications acquired Yahoo for $4.76 billion in June in a bid to limit liability, and contended that victims didn’t have any legal standing to sue. Judge Koh rejected this over a 93-page decision and held that victims who had their personal data breached by Yahoo’s apparent multiple failures as a data controller could pursue breach of contract as well as unfair competition.
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