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B.C. facility loses public's personal data
From: lyger <lyger () attrition org>
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:42:57 -0400 (EDT)
Courtesy PogoWasRight.org http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=e1b03e3e-d043-4e64-9a09-415a24636751&k=71796 Chad Skelton, CanWest News Service Published: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 VANCOUVER -- Computer tapes containing the private health and welfare records of "hundreds of thousands" of British Columbians were discovered missing from the government's main data centre in Victoria last year and have never been found, according to a confidential government investigation obtained by the Vancouver Sun. Poor record-keeping at the facility, which is run by Telus, means it's impossible to confirm exactly what happened to the 31 tapes, although the report speculates they were most likely destroyed in error or borrowed by a government staffer who forgot to return them. However, the report warns that their disappearance is serious and "may have resulted in the inadvertent disclosure of the data contents." That's a concern, the report warns, because some of the data on the tapes is so sensitive that it could be used "for the purposes of identity theft" or to "create fraudulent Care Cards" to defraud the government. Yet the report, which was conducted for the province by KPMG, went on to recommend that the public not be told about the incident. "Government policy does not require individuals to be informed of a possible disclosure of personal information," the report states. "[Notification] is only suggested where an actual disclosure of personal information is known to have occurred." [...] _______________________________________________ Dataloss Mailing List (dataloss () attrition org) http://attrition.org/dataloss Tracking more than 146 million compromised records in 345 incidents over 6 years.
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