7. January 2019
Marriott International Inc, the world’s largest hotel company, based in the USA, which was hit by a data breach in 2018, has announced new information regarding the breach in which unauthorized access to the Marriott subsidiary Starwood’s reservation database was made (we reported).
Contrary to initial statements, not 500 million records of hotel guests but only 383 million are affected. It should be noted that for a guest who has stayed several times in one of the hotels belonging to the Marriott Group, there is one record for each overnight stay. According to this, not 383 million people were affected, but fewer. However, the Marriott Group cannot give the exact number of people affected.
In addition to the corrected number of victims, Marriott announced that some confidential data such as passport and credit card numbers were unencrypted. About 5,25 million unencrypted and about 20,3 million encrypted passport numbers could be viewed by unauthorized persons. According to the company, the master key for decryption was not copied.
In addition, around 8,6 million encrypted credit card numbers were affected, of which only 345.000 were still valid. Here, too, the master key could not be captured. At the moment, it is still being investigated whether credit card numbers entered in the wrong fields and thus stored unencrypted are affected.
The French Data Protection Authority CNIL imposed a fine of €250.000,00 on telecom operator BOUYGUES TELECOM for not taking required security measures to protect the personal data of its clients.
BOUYGUES TELECOM offered their clients an option to create a profile on their webpage to have easier access to their contract details and telephone bills.
In March 2018, CNIL was informed that a lack of security measures gave free access to personal data of clients of B&You, a subsidiary company of BOUYGUES TELECOM. Each profile had its own URL address, which involved the first and last name of the client. Just by exchanging the name in the URL address, one gained free access to first and last name, date of birth, e-mail address, address and phone number as well as contracts and bills. The violation of data security went on for two years and had an impact on over two million clients.
Shortly after CNIL was informed, BOUYGUES TELECOM notified the data breach to CNIL. The company explained that the incident occurred after the computer code, which depends on user authentication, was deactivated for a test phase, but was forgotten to be re-activated after completion of the test phase. After noticing the data breach, the company quickly blocked the access to the personal data.
Nevertheless, CNIL stated that the company failed to protect the personal data of its clients and violated its obligation to take all required security measures, especially as appropriate measures would have revealed the data breach earlier.
As the incident occurred before the legal validity of GDPR, CNIL decided to impose a fine of €250.000,00 on BOUYGUES TELECOM.
4. January 2019
In the last weeks, several data breaches in different US states were discovered. The latest one occurred in the Choice Rehabilitation Center based in Missouri. Data of 4,309 patients was breached in a hack on a corporate email account from July 1 until the end of September. Choice discovered the hack in November and started an investigation after consulting with Microsoft. Provider’s emails were forwarded to a personal account, which was later deactivated.
The sent emails contained billing data for different medical services such as physical or speech therapy services. These included for example patient names, medical record numbers, treatment information, diagnoses and the beginning and end of treatment dates.
Just a few weeks before, the largest healthcare breach of 2018 became public. Due to a cyberattack on the health’s systems billing vendor AccuDoc Solutions, data of more than 2.65 million Atrium Health patients was breached. AccuDoc Solutions prepares bills and operates the online billing system for Atrium Health, which is a hospital network that comprises 44 hospitals in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
The compromised database contained data of patients and guarantors, comprising full names, addresses, dates of birth, insurance policy details, medical record numbers, account balances and dates of service. 700,000 patient’s social security numbers were also among the hacked data.
However, financial data such as credit card numbers are not affected. Even though the data breach is contained to AccuDoc Solutions, Atrium Health has hired a team to investigate the occurrence and has reviewed its security precautions. Those patients whose Social Security numbers were hacked are being offered one year of free credit monitoring.
1. January 2019
Dear readers,
the team of the blog privacy-ticker.com wish you a happy new year and all the best for 2019.
Once again this year we will keep you up to date on the subject of data protection.
Best regards,
privacy-ticker.com
28. December 2018
The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) is urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to work towards a national privacy legislation and prevent fragmentation of the U.S. privacy landscape.
In its plea, the ANA specifically raises concerns about current developments regarding the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). It deems both legislations to be overly restrictive and threatening to the free flow of information that “is vital to delivering the products and services that consumers value and expect” and asks the FTC to carry out a detailed review of the effects of the GDPR and the CCPA on competition and consumers.
The ANA is worried as “other states are considering additional and potentially inconsistent privacy and data security laws” and has been working with member companies and other industry groups to develop a new privacy paradigm that would be enforced by the FTC as a single national standard.
The approach involves allowing companies to use data considered “per se reasonable,” and prohibiting uses of data deemed “per se unreasonable.”
The reasonable practices “could include the collection and use of non-sensitive data for advertising purposes with consumer transparency and choice,” the ANA writes. Unreasonable ones “could include determining adverse terms or conditions or ineligibility for an individual’s: employment; credit; health care treatment; insurance; education and financial aid”.
The comments were filed in response to a request for input on the February 2019 FTC Hearing on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century, which will focus on consumer privacy.
27. December 2018
Uber’s major data breach of 2016 still has consequences as it has also been addressed by the French Data Protection Authority “CNIL”.
As reported in November 2017 and September 2018, the company had tried to hide that personal data of 50 million Uber customers had been stolen and chose to pay the hackers instead of disclosing the incident to the public.
1,4 million French customers were affected as well which is why the CNIL has now fined Uber 400K Euros (next to the settlement with the US authorities amounting to $148 Million).
The CNIL came to find out that the breach could have been avoided by implementing certain basic security measures such as stronger authentication.
Great Britain and the Netherlands have also already imposed a fine totalling €1 million.
19. December 2018
As it is widely known these days, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force earlier this year to standardize data protection regulation in the EU. This has now lead to the fact that Google will update the company’s terms of service and privacy policy to be compliant with the GDPR.
The company started to notify the countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland in regard to some upcoming changes. They will come into effect on January 22, 2019.
The most important update, also legally, is the change of the data controller. The Google Ireland Limited will become the so called “data controller” who is responsible for the information of European and Swiss users . Therefore, Google Ireland Limited will be in charge to respond to request from users and to ensure compliance with the GDPR. At present, these services are provided by Google LLC, based in the U.S.
For website operators this means that they might also have to adapt their privacy policy accordingly. This is the case, for example, if Google Analytics is used.
Furthermore, there are no changes in regard to the current settings and services.
18. December 2018
The Argentine Authority of Access to Public Information (Agencia de Acceso a la Información Pública – AAIP) has recently issued its guidelines for Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs) on international data transfer. The Binding Corporate Rules are a mechanism for multinational corporations to legitimize international transfers of personal data within the group. This tool for creating a contractually binding “code of conduct” regarding international data transfers was evolved in the EU and has also been incorporated expressly in Article 47 GDPR. BCRs have been designed as a global solution to comply with the principles of data protection and thus create an adequate level of data protection (cf. Art. 44, 47 GDPR).
Like the GDPR, the Argentine Personal Data Protection Law No. 25, 326 does not permit the cross-border transfer of personal data to countries or international organizations that do not provide an adequate level of data protection. Such transfers would be allowed in accordance with Regulatory Decree No. 1558/2001 when the data subjects expressly gave their consent to the transfer; an appropriate international data transfer agreement is in place; or an adequate protection level arises from self-regulation systems.
According to Regulation 159/2018 published Dec. 7, 2018, the AAIP has now approved guidelines for such BCRs that legitimize international data transfer to countries or international organizations that have not been recognized as providing an adequate level of data protection.
These guidelines provide a framework of principles for a self-regulation mechanism reflecting the requirements and conditions imposed by the Argentine Personal Data Protection Law. The rules of the self-regulation system have to be legally binding upon all members of the corporate group as well as employees, subcontractors and third-party beneficiaries (e.g. data subjects, AAIP). Among other things, those BCRs must consider lawfulness conditions of processing, data subjects’ rights and specific protection concerning sensitive aspects. Furthermore, the subsequent cross-border data transfer to those entities providing a non-adequate level of data protection shall be restricted, data subjects shall be able to place a judicial or administrative complaint and under the BCRs must an appropriate staff data protection training has to take place with regard to data processing activities.
The AAIP shall eventually be entitled to engage in international data transfers originating from an Argentine entity as data exporter and – as third-party beneficiary – in those cases in which personal data of subjects in Argentina is affected.
However, the approval of the AAIP of BCRs that follow the requirements of Regulation No. 159/2018 is not required. In the case a group of companies would rely on BCRs that differ from those conditions though, the relevant documents need to be submitted to the AAIP for approval within the term of 30 calendar days from the date that the transfer took place.
As a valid mechanism to legitimize the international transfer of data within a group of companies, the use of BCRs is been reasonably expected to increase when it comes to in Argentina.
17. December 2018
The Irish Data Protection Commission announced in a press release on December 14, 2018 that it had initiated a statutory inquiry into Facebook.
Due to the frequent, especially in the recent past, data breaches of the American company and the total number of reported data breaches since the GDPR came into force on May 25, 2018, the Irish Data Protection Commission has initiated an investigation into compliance with the relevant provisions of the GDPR against Facebook.
In recent weeks, reports of renewed breaches of data protection by Facebook have continued.
Most recently, it became known that the Italian competition authority AGCM had imposed a fine of 10 million euros on Facebook because the company had passed on data to other platforms without the express consent of the users and that a bug in the programming interface for picture processing led to third-party apps having access to pictures of 6.8 million Facebook users, some of which had not even been published by the users.
14. December 2018
According to the German information portal mobilsicher.de, about 30 % of all Android apps contact Facebook as soon as you start them. This also includes apps that are directly related to religion, sexual orientation or health. The user has usually no idea of this connection.
Mobilsicher.de tested out several Android app versions, which were available in the Play-Store on November 29, 2018. For example the Apps of the German political parties CDU and SPD.
App developers integrate so-called Software Development Kits (SDK) into their apps because they include the helpful “Facebook Analytics” function. This function provides the app operator with information on how users use the app. Facebook, on the other hand, receive the user’s advertising ID, which is individually assigned to each smartphone and, if available, can link this ID to the corresponding Facebook account. This leads to the fact that someone who has downloaded for example a pregnancy guide app now getting ads for baby clothes displayed on Facebook.
Facebook accesses user data even if they do not have a Facebook account at all. Upon request, the company confirmed that it is not clear to the user which data is transferred to Facebook. A tool called “Clear History”, announced by Mark Zuckerberg in May 2018, which should help this lack of transparency, is still not available.
Facebook itself does not consider this type of collecting data a problem, as users would have the option of opting out of personalized advertising and deactivating it either on their smartphone or in their Facebook account.
„If a person utilizes one of these controls, then Facebook will not use data gathered on these third-party apps (e.g. through Facebook Audience Network), for ad targeting”, the company replied to the question of whether the information would be deleted after the transfer. If someone decides against personalized advertising, Facebook still transfers the data, but with a corresponding note. Nevertheless, the user’s data will be collected.
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