Security News

Brit Conservative Party used 10 million people's names to derive their country of origin, ethnicity and religion according to ICO report
2020-11-12 15:30

The UK's ruling Conservative Party has been using personal data in a way that spots an individual's likely county of origin, ethnic origin and religion based on their first and last name. According to an ICO report, the Tory party purchased so-called "Estimated onomastic data" and appended it to the records of 10 million voters.

UK ICO fines biz profiteering from COVID-19 crisis by sending unsolicited marketing texts to Joe Public
2020-09-24 13:00

Texts were received by unsuspecting members of the public between 29 February and 30 April, said the UK Information Commissioner's Office. The texts promoted Zoono-branded hand cleaning products that purported to be "Effective against coronavirus," said the ICO. Reg readers will remember that silly members of the public bulk-bought certain products, including toilet paper and hand sanitisers as the spread of the potentially deadly virus made its way across Europe.

Crypto founder admits $25 million ICO backed by celebrities was a scam
2020-06-18 11:43

The Miami-based cryptocurrency firm Centra Tech was built on fairy dust and paid celebrity hoo-ha, but co-founder Robert Joseph Farkas is going to be doing real time in a real prison for the $25 million initial coin offering rip-off. Centra Tech's founders included Farkas, who held different roles, such as chief marketing officer and chief operating officer.

Dixons fined £500,000 by ICO for crap security that exposed 5.6 million customers' payment cards
2020-01-09 18:15

Dixons Retail is facing a £500,000 penalty from the Information Commissioner's Office after a hacker installed malware that infected thousands of point of sale tills and scooped up 5.6 million payment card details. The ICO told us that in addition to the aforementioned personal financial data, Dixons had initially found that roughly 10 million non-financial records had also been pilfered from the retailer's internal servers and exfiltrated.

ICO scammer Maksim Zaslavskiy to miss 2020 Tokyo Olympics over digital currency fraud
2019-11-20 07:01

Businessman gets 18 months for bogus cryptocoin sales A 39 year-old man from New York has been ordered to spend the next 18 months in prison after being convicted of cryptocurrency-based securities fraud.…

ICO: UK Police Should Go Slow on Facial Recognition
2019-11-04 17:03

Commissioner Elizabeth Denham Also Calls for Creating a 'Code of Practice'Elizabeth Denham, the U.K.'s chief privacy watchdog, is urging police to go slow when it comes to using live facial...

GDPR superpowers lead to whopper ICO fines for BA, Marriott
2019-07-11 11:20

The ICO isn't pulling its punches: The penalty for BA's data breach is about 367 times higher than the previous record-setting fine.

Marriott's got 99 million problems and the ICO's one: Starwood hack mega-fine looms over
2019-07-09 18:15

Technically not yet A Thing but there's a war of words over it The UK's Information Commissioner's Office wants to fine Marriott Hotels £99m over its loss of 383 million customer booking records...

Raiding party! UK's ICO drops in unannounced on couple of dodgy-dialling dirtbag outfits
2019-03-12 15:25

Data protection police come a-knocking. 'Put your computers and docs in the facking bag!' The UK's data protection watchdog today raided two businesses suspected of making millions of nuisance calls.…

UK's ICO event on targeted ads opens floor to the adtech industry: Anybody? No? Speak for 10 minutes. Hello?
2019-03-07 15:58

How to wind up your opponents 101: Refuse to engage The adtech industry was unable to muster even a single speaker to fill a 10-minute slot to discuss the security implications of programmatic...