Tag Archives: Personal Data

British official urges more protection for children ‘datafied from birth’

A girl views a new iPad tablet computer at an Apple store during its UK launch in central London May 28, 2010. Diehard fans mobbed Apple Inc stores in Asia and Europe as the iPad tablet computer went on sale outside the United States for the first time on Friday. The device, a little smaller than a letter-size sheet and with a colour touchscreen, is designed for surfing the Web, watching movies and reading. It has been hailed by the publishing industry as a potential life-saver. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor (BRITAIN - Tags: BUSINESS SOCIETY SCI TECH) - LM1E65S12UK01

By Adela Suliman

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – British children are having vast quantities of personal data collected from birth, according to a report released on Thursday that calls for more transparency and greater legal protection.

From proud parents sharing a photo of their newborn baby online to internet-based toys, smart speakers and location tracking gadgets, children’s every move is being tracked, the Children’s Commissioner for England warned in the report.

“We’re all datafied but the difference for children is … they’re datafied from birth,” the report’s author Simone Vibert, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“I think we should be concerned because we don’t know what the consequences of all this information about children will be in the future.”

Vibert said parents should stop and think before sharing information online about their children, whose online data footprints could one day put them at greater risk of identity theft or limit their job and university prospects.

Last year, a popular children’s toy, CloudPets, was found to have breached data laws after gathering and storing online about two million personal messages shared between children and their family members.

About 79 percent of five to seven year olds in Britain go online every week, mostly using a tablet, this jumps to 99 percent of 12 to 15 years olds, according to a 2017 report by Britain’s communications regulator, Ofcom.

Children aged 11 to 16 post on social media on average 26 times a day, which means by the age of 18 they are likely to have posted 70,000 times, the report found.

It said that while personal information in the wrong hands could pose an immediate threat to children’s safety, there is less understanding of how personal data gathered in childhood shape people’s prospects in the long term.

Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield called on the government to urgently refine existing data protection legislation.

The report said her office would draft a law outlining the statutory duty of care governing the relationship between social media companies and their audiences.

It also urged companies to be more transparent about their collection and use of children’s data and recommended safeguards including improved education in schools on social media use.

Asked to respond, the government said it was “determined to make Britain the safest place to be online”.

“Parents need to have confidence their children are protected,” a spokeswoman for Britain’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

(Reporting by Adela Suliman; Editing by Claire Cozens. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Cyber-attack on Singapore health database steals details of 1.5 million, including PM

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Manila, Philippines November 14, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron Favila/Pool

By Jack Kim

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A major cyber attack on Singapore’s government health database stole the personal information of about 1.5 million people, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the government said on Friday.

The attack, which the government called “the most serious breach of personal data” that the country has experienced, comes as the highly wired and digitalized state has made cybersecurity a top priority for the ASEAN bloc and for itself.

Singapore is this year’s chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) group.

“Investigations by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) and the Integrated Health Information System (IHiS)confirmed that this was a deliberate, targeted and well-planned cyberattack,” a government statement said.

“It was not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs,” the joint statement by the Health Ministry and the Ministry of Communications and Information said.

About 1.5 million patients who visited clinics between May 2015 and July 4 this year have had their non-medical personal particulars illegally accessed and copied, the statement said.

“The attackers specifically and repeatedly targeted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s personal particulars and information on his outpatient dispensed medicines,” it said.

A Committee of Inquiry will be established and immediate action will be taken to strengthen government systems against cyber attacks, the Ministry of Communications said in a separate statement.

It did not provide details about what entity or individuals may have been behind the attack.

Lee, in a Facebook post following the announcement, said the breach of his personal medical data was not incidental and he did not know what information the attackers were hoping to find.

“My medication data is not something I would ordinarily tell people about, but there is nothing alarming in it,” he said.

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Michael Perry)

TruNews: Charges In Massive Cyberattacks against JPMorgan Chase & Co

TRUNEWS – Prosecutors have announced criminal charges for three men accused of helping to run a series of hacking and fraud schemes, including an attack in 2014 against JPMorgan Chase & Co that generated hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal profit.

Gery Shalon, Joshua Samuel Aaron and Ziv Orenstein are named in a 23-count indictment, the three are accused of crimes involving at least nine financial services companies and media outlets, as well as online casinos, payment processing for criminals, and an illegal bitcoin exchange.

A fourth man, Anthony Murgio, is also named in the bitcoin exchange scam.

The charges are the first to be connected to the attack on JPMorgan, in which 83 million customers had their personal data accessed; prosecutors are calling it the largest theft of customer data from a US financial institution.

Other companies who were affected include E Trade  Financial, which says it’s contacted some 31,000 customers who may have been affected.

JPMorgan says it continues to work with authorities in an effort to fight further cybercrimes.