Bay Area (AP) -- Until lately, medical files owned by nearly 300,000 Californians sitting unsecured on the web for the whole world to determine.
There have been insurance forms, Social Security amounts and doctors' notes. One of the files were summaries that typed out, in painstaking detail, a trucker's crushed fingers, a maintenance worker's damaged ribs and something man's bout with sexual disorder.
At any given time of mounting computer hacking risks, the incident provides an alarming glimpse at privacy risks because the nation moves continuously into a period by which every American's sensitive medical information is going to be scanned.
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Electronic records can lower costs, cut paperwork and ultimately save lives. The federal government is providing bonuses to early adopters and threatening penalties and cuts in obligations to medical companies who won't change.
But you will find not-so-hidden costs with modernization.
"When things fail, they are able to really fail,Inch states Janet Givens, director from the nonprofit Privacy Privileges Reference, which tracks data breaches. "The most well-designed systems aren't safe. ... This situation is a great one of the way the human element may be the poorest link."
Los Angeles Medical-Legal Consultants, which signifies doctors and hospitals seeking payment from patients receiving workers' compensation, place the records online it thought only employees can use, owner Joel Hecht states.
The private data is discovered by Aaron Titus, a investigator with Identity Finder who then notified Hecht's firm and also the Connected Press. He thought it was through Internet searches, a typical tactic for locating personal data published on unsecured sites.
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The information were "open to anybody on the planet with half a brain and use of Google," Titus states.
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