How many victims? 300,000,
What type of personal information? Names and Social Security numbers.
What happened? The electronic files, which belonged to Southern California Medical-Legal Consultants (SCMLC), a company that helps medical providers recover workers' compensation insurance funds, were discovered by a data security firm through automated Google searching. The information was stored on a computer that was intended for internal purposes.
What was the response? The company took “immediate steps to remediate the situation” and is taking other unspecified measures to ensure a similar incident does not recur. Affected individuals are being notified.
Quote: "We take data security and privacy very seriously," Joel Hecht, president of SCMLC, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, our internal security policies and procedures were not followed.”
Source: Marketwire news release, “Possible Data Breach Discovered and Contained,” June 12, 2011.