Mass. settles with financial services firm over stolen laptop
30862
Ameriprise Financial Services has agreed to pay Massachusetts $25,000 in connection with the theft one year ago of a laptop that contained sensitive data on 158,000 customers and 68,000 current and former Ameriprise employees.
678119
Morgan Stanley  agreed to pay  $12.5 million to resolve charges that it failed to provide  arbitration plaintiffs with e-mails it said were destroyed in  the September 11, 2001 attacks, when in fact it had saved the  e-mails on backup files.
247925
Michael Jackson on Monday settled a breach-of-contract suit brought by a financial firm that claimed to have brokered the deal that allowed him to avoid default on more than $270 million in loans last year.
400859
Innocence lost There's trouble in paradise after a third-party supplier lost a laptop containing the personal details of hundreds of workers at Cornwall's Eden Project. The theft of the PC from the car of a worker for Moorepay, the firm that handles the project's payroll, has sparked ID theft fears.â¦
199971
Details on 11 million customers went awol The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined The Nationwide Building Society Â£980,000 for the loss of a laptop which contained "confidential customer data" on 11 million customers.â¦
293068
A laptop containing confidential information linked to the inquiry into the murder of loyalist Billy Wright, is stolen.
104785
(InfoWorld) - Washington's attorney general has settled the first case prosecuted under the state's 2005 Computer Spyware Act. The settlement announced Monday is with antispyware vendor Secure Computer. The White Plains, New York, software company wasÂ accused of marketing its product via deceptive spam and pop-up ads, which offered free spyware scans that always detected a problem with the computer that was scanned. The company and its president, Paul Burke, will pay $725,000 in legal fees and $200,000 in penalties, and will reimburse Washington state customers $75,000, said Paula Selis, senior council with the attorney general's office. "Given the scope of the defendants' practices and the amount of consumer harm out there, we feel this is a very fair settlement." More than 1,100 state residents purchased the company's Spyware Cleaner software since it went on the market in 2004, Selis said. Those customers will now be e-mailed by Secure Computer and offered a refund for the $49.95 product, under terms of the settlement. Secure Computer, which admits no wrongdoing in the matter, is also prohibited fromÂ using deceptive marketing techniquesÂ to promote its software, and the company must now review the advertising of its marketing affiliates to make sure they comply with the settlement. That seems like an unlikely possibility, however, because Spyware Cleaner was pulled from the market shortly after the lawsuits were filed in late January, and Secure ComputerÂ is now out of business,Â according to the company's Web site. Representatives from Secure Computer could not be reached for comment. Burke, who was Secure Computer's president, has formed a new company called Safe App Software, which is now selling a registry cleaner product, Selis said. That product is not being sold in the U.S. she added. Secure Computer and four of its business partners were sued by Microsoft and the Washington attorney general in January, but charges against three of the men have already been settled. A fourth man, Manoj Kumar of Maharashtra, India, could not be located, the attorney general's office said. Burke and Secure Computer settled the Microsoft lawsuit about two months ago, said Spencer Freeman, an attorney with Freeman Law Firm Inc. who represented the defendants in the case. Freeman declined to comment on Monday's settlement.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
720019
Morgan Stanley  agreed to pay $12.5 million to resolve charges that it failed to provide arbitration plaintiffs with e-mails it said were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks, when in fact it had saved the e-mails on backup files.
332659
A credit union in Massachusetts has sent TJX an invoice for $590,000 to cover the monetary costs and reputational damage that the financial institution says it incurred as a result of the data breach disclosed by the retailer in January.
101804
Computer Associates has announced a deal with the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission that will solve the software vendor&#39;s accounting scandal.
95038
State says it has made a deal with PC maker over civil charges related to methods used in an HP leak investigation.
741550
Wells Fargo is informing some employees of a potential compromise of their personal data after the theft of a laptop at an auditing firm working for the company.
406026
HARTFORD, July 23  â The Hartford Financial Services Group paid $115 million to settle accusations that it allowed illegal trading in some mutual funds, the company and the Connecticut attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, announced on Monday.
676751
(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Commerce Department reported that 1,137 laptops have been lost or stolen since 2001, with 249 of them containing some degree of personal data. The department couldn't determine whose data may have been on the machines, of which 672 belonged to the Census Bureau. It wasn't aware of any data having being used improperly, it said Thursday. The findings are from a Commerce Department review covering 15 agencies that use a total of 30,000 laptops. It comes as businesses and governments try to tighten their control over mobile devices after several high-profile incidents concerning theÂ loss of sensitive data. The Census Bureau's laptops -- used for collecting census data in the field -- rarely contain data on more than 100 households, and the data can't be accessed by the surveyors, many of whom are temporary, hourly employees. the department said. However, the Census Bureau also lost 15 handheld computers used to gather survey data. As a result, the department is contacting 558 households. The risk of the data being misused was "extremely low," it said, since the data is encrypted and two passwords are required for access. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which falls under the Commerce Department, lost 325 laptops, three of which had personal data. One of the laptops was stolen after a fire at one of its buildings in Seattle, Washington. The machine contained addresses, birth dates and Social Security numbers for 146 employees, the department said. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez said the agency plans toÂ strengthen accountability standards, encrypt data on all department laptops and implement two-factor authentication. U.S. government agencies have been stung by hardware losses in recent months. In May, aÂ laptop and external hard drive was stolenÂ from the home of a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs employee containingÂ data on 26.5 million veteransÂ and active-duty military personnel. The laptop was recovered, and two teenagers were arrested in June. Â
150993
International Business Machines Corp.  IBM.N has settled for an undisclosed sum part of a  potentially multi-billion-dollar lawsuit over its pension plan,  a Wednesday court filing shows.
393193
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;
769103
The laptop holds no local data, so no worries if it's lost or stolen.