Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by on Saturday January 07 2017, @12:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the payback-for-the-drafty-gowns dept.

A report on eSecurityPlanet says that a hospital patient has posted 15,000 people's personal information on a social media site. This includes names, addresses, Social Security information and Medicaid information.

The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) recently announced that personal information belonging to as many as 15,000 DHHS clients was posted to a social media site over a year ago by a patient at New Hampshire Hospital.

"The personal information was accessed, in October 2015, by an individual who was a patient at New Hampshire Hospital at that time, using a computer that was available for use by patients in the library of the hospital," DHHS said in a statement. "In the course of investigation, we learned that this individual was observed by a staff member to have accessed non-confidential DHHS information on a personal computer located in the New Hampshire Hospital library."

The staff member notified a supervisor, who restricted access to library computers -- but the incident was never reported to hospital management or to DHHS.

In August of 2016, almost a year later, a hospital security official notified DHHS that the same person may have posted some DHHS information on social media, though an investigation didn't uncover any evidence that confidential information had been exposed.

Finally, on November 4, 2016, New Hampshire Hospital security notified DHHS that the same individual had in fact posted confidential, personal information to a social media site.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @02:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @02:50AM (#450567)

    How can HIPPA and other such things even be taken seriously when they're allowed to store the data on computers running proprietary software? Where's the commitment to freedom and privacy?