F&F: California Loses 800,000 Child Support Records

Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2012-04-08 00:43

Article here. Excerpt:

'Have you been contacted by the Department of Child Support Services that your information was on one of the four backup storage cartridges lost?

Information about 800,000 adults and children in California's child support system were lost during shipment. The cartridges contain such information as names, addresses, Social Security numbers, drivers’ license or identification numbers, names of health insurance providers, health insurance plan membership identification numbers and employer information.'

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Comments

I hope this was an act of sabotage and not simply an accident. Sort of like the KGB losing records during the Stalin era. Not exactly a heartbreak.

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Submitted by Luek on Sun, 2012-04-08 15:43

Federal law (HIPAA, HITECH) requires that backups for health care records be encrypted! Of course these aren't health care records.

Accidents like this happen from time to time. I'm surprised that the backups were not encrypted as this is pretty sensitive information.

Now if it was sabotage, someone would've destroyed or corrupted the database over a period of time.

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Submitted by canaryguy on Sun, 2012-04-08 17:07