U.K. company fined over laptop theft
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Financial institution failed to operate effective security measures to protect customers from data theft, government watchdog agency says.
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A customer filed a $54 million lawsuit against Best Buy for losing an $1100 laptop she took in for service. The reason, exposure to identity theft.  It's about time vendors were forced to recognize the value of customers' data. I recall how the chief genius at the Apple store in Emeryville complained that they would have to eat the cost of the drive in a deal they made with the manufacturer. Someday they'll have a clue that the data on most drives is worth far more than the hardware, and that their potential liability, if the data ends up in the hands of an identity thief, is also much greater.
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Police investigate the theft of a laptop from a Royal Navy officer which had personal details of 600,000 people.
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A Briton has been arrested in connection with the theft of computer code for key net hardware.
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A company suing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Association for patent infringement has asked for $20 million to settle claims that the nonprofit had copied its keyboard.Lagos Analysis Corp., or Lancor, is still trying to settle after&#160;filing the patent lawsuit&#160;in Federal High Court, Lagos Judicial Division in Nigeria, said Ad&#233; Oyegbola, Lancor&#39;s CEO. Lancor, now based in Natick, Massachusetts, has offices in Nigeria and owns a Nigerian patent for a four-shift keyboard, allowing computers to better handle multiple languages, Oyegbola said.Oyegbola on Wednesday confirmed information published on the Groklaw blog saying that in August his company had asked OLPC for $20 million. That figure was based on OLPC information on potential distribution in Nigeria, Oyegbola said.Nigeria, in July 2006,&#160;placed an order for 1 million of the laptops, but the Nigerian government is now reviewing that decision. Lancor&#39;s Konyin Multilingual Keyboards sell for $19.95, meaning 1 million of them would be worth approximately $20 million.Lancor in December obtained a temporary injunction against OLPC distributing its laptop in the country.&quot;We didn&#39;t start the process because we&#39;re looking for the money,&quot; Oyegbola said. &quot;It doesn&#39;t make sense for us not to protect our intellectual property.&quot;Lancor, in its lawsuit, accuses OLPC of illegal reverse engineering its multilingual keyboard.But OLPC had not yet begun selling its laptop at the time of the demand, OLPC&#39;s lawyer wrote in a letter published on Groklaw. &quot;I feel obliged to note that, given the fact that OLPC has sold no multilingual keyboards, and that, according to Lancor&#39;s Web site, its multilingual keyboard sells for $19.95, your demand for $20 million is not well founded,&quot; lawyer Bruce Parker of the Foley Hoag law firm wrote.Groklaw&#39;s Pamela Jones, a frequent critic of patent lawsuits against open-source projects, called the lawsuit &quot;ridiculous.&quot;&quot;In short, they apparently jumped the gun, sending the dunning letter before OLPC had even shipped anything, not to mention that OLPC is a charity, not a business, and asking for money in a sum that doesn&#39;t match reality,&quot; she wrote.A OLPC spokeswoman didn&#39;t immediately respond to a request for a comment.Oyegbola said he hopes his company can still settle with OLPC. &quot;We&#39;re hoping it doesn&#39;t get to [a trial],&quot; he said. &quot;It&#39;s in the hands of the lawyers now.&quot;The evidence against OLPC is sketchy, Jones wrote on Groklaw. She questioned Oyegbola&#39;s motives, saying his actions may aid a rival project by Intel.&quot;Maybe this doomed litigation effort will last just long enough for a Nigerian knock-off of the OLPC, or the&#160;OLPC on Intel, to become ready for release,&quot; she wrote. &quot;Maybe it&#39;s just about money a couple of guys want. Who knows why people do things like this?&quot;The goal of the nonprofit OLPC, founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nicholas Negroponte, is to donate laptops to children in developing nations. Through Dec. 31, residents of the U.S. and Canada could&#160;donate $400 and get one laptop for themselves, while sending a second to a child overseas.
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LANCOR (Lagos Analysis Corporation), a Nigerian company headquartered in Massachusetts, has sued One Laptop Per Child for $20 million in damages and an injunction blocking OLPC from distribution in Nigeria.
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A laptop containing the details of 600,000 people has been stolen, the Ministry of Defence announced Friday, in another staggering loss of personal data in Britain.
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A UK company is ordered to pay out Â£750 in damages for sending spam.
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ITWorld: Police in the UK have arrested a man in connection with the theft of source code from networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc.
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THIEVES and vandals have struck in three parts of the Waterside area of Londonderry.   At Campsie Industrial Estate two Dell laptop computers have been stolen from commercial premises. The computers, valued at around pounds 550 each, were taken between 5.30pm on Monday and 7.30am yesterday.
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A Washington, D.C., woman has filed a lawsuit seeking $54 million in damages from Best Buy after the electronics retailer lost her laptop computer last year.The lawsuit was filed in D.C. superior court last November but was publicized in media outlets this week. According to plaintiff Raelyn Campbell, Geek Squad technicians at Best Buy&#39;s Tenleytown, D.C., store lost the computer sometime around July 2007, then the company misled her about its whereabouts for a few weeks before finally admitting on Aug. 9 that it had been lost.Best Buy offered Campbell $1,110 and a $500 gift card in compensation, something she calls a &quot;lowball&quot; offer on a blog she has devoted to the issue.According to her, the point of the lawsuit is to publicly embarrass Best Buy into changing its privacy policy in such cases.&quot;To me, the big issue is not the low-balling and bullying tactics, but Best Buy&#39;s systematic disregard for its customers&#39; personal information and potential exposure to identity theft,&quot; she wrote in her blog. &quot;I am hoping the attention that the lawsuit and this website generate might motivate Best Buy and other consumer electronics stores entrusted with products that contain consumers&#39; personal information to adopt thorough procedures and policies to safeguard customers&#39; property and personal information against theft.&quot;Best Buy can&#39;t say much about the issue because it&#39;s still before the court, but the company is working to find out what went wrong, according to company spokeswoman Nissa French.&quot;We&#39;re obviously embarrassed and disappointed that we were unable to resolve this customer&#39;s issue. We&#39;ve tried to resolve this dispute and feel badly that it escalated to a lawsuit,&quot; she said in an e-mail.Campbell could not be reached for comment.On her blog, she admitted that the $54 million in damages she was seeking was an &quot;absurd amount,&quot; but said that she chose such a large sum in order to draw attention to the problem.Laptop thefts are frequently the source of widely publicized data breaches. On Wednesday, Lifeblood, a Memphis, Tennessee, blood collection agency, said it was notifying 320,000 blood donors after two of its laptops went missing. The computers contained personal information including Social Security numbers.The issue of computer retailers and repair shops losing consumer laptops has not gained much attention, but Campbell believes these companies have a &quot;legal and moral obligation&quot; to safeguard confidential information on computers that are entrusted to them.Although Campbell&#39;s situation is an unusual one, it makes sense for Best Buy to take extra steps to protect its customers&#39; privacy by offering ID theft protection services, said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a privacy advocacy group that tracks data breaches. &quot;We&#39;re talking about a loss of something that&#39;s been entrusted to them,&quot; he said. &quot;As a bare minimum, they should be doing that.&quot;
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The BSA trade group ups its reward for information on U.K. companies that are using illegal software.
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Laptop stolen from Royal Navy officer contained passport and bank details of 600,000 people
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The laptop with personal information on about 600,000 people was stolen from an officer in the Royal Navy.
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Company wins $84,177 over term violation; U.K. individuals, though, are virtually helpless against spammers, lawyer says.
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A 20-year-old man has been arrested in England in the theft of the proprietary software blueprints used by Cisco Systems Inc.'s networking equipment, police and the company confirmed Friday.
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In Dayton, a state employee returns to work to find a $2,000 computer stolen. In Cleveland, someone walks into an unlocked office and takes a $2,200 laptop belonging to the state auditor's office. In Ohio, these scenarios not unusual, with state-issued computers frequently stolen or missing, according to a recent review of reports of stolen equipment by The Associated Press.