NEWS & UPDATES

Cab Guru Limited has been found liable for breaking data protection and electronic communication rules by sending out hundreds of thousands of unwanted text messages to market their services.

The company was set-up by a number of licensed taxis and private hire firms to make an app for customers to book cabs through their smartphones… the app allowed people to compare fares and how long taxis would take to pick them up.

Ti help market the new venture, the Cambridge-based company sent text messages that advertised their app to hundreds of thousands of people. While the stunt may have worked for some, hundreds took to complaining and reporting the unsolicited marketing messages.
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“Are you getting the best rates for home energy saving solutions and products?!”

How many calls do you get with over enthusiastic salespeople asking you if you want to switch your energy provider, bring a PPI claim or even talk about a car accident you didn’t even know you’d been involved in?

After the first few calls you start to realise just how annoying they are, and then the questions begin: “How did they get my number? Why are they calling me? Where are they coming from?”

There are all sorts of ways they can get hold of your details, and there’s a very big market for the sale of information for marketing purposes. It can often be a dark web of information being passed around time and time again, and when companies fail to check whether they can call people, the ICO will end up involved.
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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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Insurance and financial services giant Nationwide Mutual Insurance has agreed to pay out around £4 million to settle a colossal data breach that reportedly exposed personal data belonging to 1.27 million of their consumers.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance was attacked by hackers who managed to obtain a haul of personal data, including: Social security numbers; Driving licence details; Credit scores; and other personally identifiable information.

With this information, hackers and cybercriminals can be equipped with the tools required to commit identity fraud and therefore inflict huge harm and disruption to lives of the victims.
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At the capital of the United States, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that customers are permitted to sue CareFirst for a data breach that reportedly compromised 1.1 million of their customers’ personal information.

A relatively small number of customers brought the class action (group action) lawsuit, alleging that the health insurance provider had attributed to the breach for their carelessness and lack of cybersecurity.
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Well-known online price comparison website MoneySupermarket.com has been issued a hefty fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for reportedly sending millions of unwanted emails to customers who’d opted out of receiving marketing correspondence.

The company offers to compare prices for insurance, energy, credit cards, savings etc., and it’s likely that there’s always a myriad of deals and offers in these sectors; but many customers don’t want an abundance of emails constantly updating them of new deals. As with all newsletters, customers have a choice to opt-out, but in this case, MoneySupermarket.com appeared to ignore them under the reportedly ‘false pretence‘ of a legitimate update.
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Data breaches continue to happen more and more often, and there still doesn’t seem to be all that much being done to stop them.

We don’t need to remind companies about the worst data breaches; we’re sure they’re fresh in peoples’ minds having been splashed all over the news for so long.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the biggest data breaches as ranked by cybersecurity journalist, Anas Baig.
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The Kansas Department of Commerce’s employment service has reportedly been hacked with almost a total of 6.5 million records stolen.

The agency’s job-seeking division Job Link Alliance-TS was breached and its databases were illegally accessed. As the organisation’s nature is to help people find and apply for jobs, they hold a wealth of information including individuals’ personal contact information, résumés (CVs) and social security numbers. In the U.S, the social security number is one of the most sensitive types of information that can be stolen. With a social security number, criminals can steal a person’s identity.
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