HRSDC Data Loss Might Face a Class-Action Lawsuit

[Erica Absetz <eabsetz () opensecurityfoundation org>]

http://www.oyetimes.com/news/canada/34485-hrsdc-data-loss-might-face-a-class-action-lawsuit

A resident of Ottawa, claiming to be one of the
more-than-half-a-million victimized student loan recipients whose
personal data was recently lost by a federal government office is
intending to launch a joint class-action lawsuit against the office on
Thursday. The data was lost through a classified hard drive which went
missing from a federal office, though its' officials claim it might
just be misplaced.

A mother of three, Jennifer Britton, claims she got wind of the
so-called privacy breach through Facebook over the weekend.
Consequently, Britton explained she approached the Human Resources and
Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) for confirming whether she was one
of the victims, and the officials apparently asked Britton to protect
her credit information from potential fraud. Furthermore, she was
requested to spend almost $14 each month for keeping her credit
information save, which she utterly opposed saying that "I mean $14 a
month doesn't sound like a lot, but if this is going on for years and
years, it's a fee." She explained that "I've got little kids, I'm on
maternity leave and every dollar counts."

Britton has demanded that the government shall be held responsible of
paying any cost related to protecting victimized people, since the
federal office is wholly responsible for data loss in the first place.
She stated that "I absolutely don't think that it should be on me and
other former students to pay this when it's the government's mistake."
Britton's Lawyer, Bob Buckingham, is approaching all victims of the
data breach to assemble a class-action lawsuit in response to the lost
information.
_______________________________________________
Dataloss-discuss Mailing List (dataloss-discuss () datalossdb org)
Archived at http://seclists.org/dataloss/
Unsubscribe at http://datalossdb.org/mailing_list

Supporters:

Risk Based Security (http://www.riskbasedsecurity.com/)
Risk Based Security equips organizations with security intelligence, risk
management services and on-demand security solutions to establish
customized risk-based programs to address information security and
compliance challenges. 

Tenable Network Security (http://www.tenable.com/)
Tenable Network Security provides a suite of solutions which unify real-time
vulnerability, event and compliance monitoring into a single, role-based, interface
for administrators, auditors and risk managers to evaluate, communicate and
report needed information for effective decision making and systems management.