Tag Archives: settlement

InfoTrax Systems, a Utah-based technology company, has agreed to implement a comprehensive data security program to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that the company failed to put in place reasonable security safeguards, which allowed a hacker to access the personal information of a million consumers.  InfoTrax Systems, L.C., provides back-end operation services to multi-level marketers. This includes such services as compensation, inventory, orders, accounting, training,… More

The concept that one is known by the company one keeps dates back to ancient times (the particular phrase is attributed to both Aesop and the Book of Proverbs).  But this simple aphorism continues to be true.  A recent example is the $500,000 that Advanced Care Hospitalists (ACH) had to pay to the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (OCR) to settle potential violations of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules.… More

The FTC’s COPPA Guidance does an admirable job explaining the basics of what a business needs to do to comply with COPPA, but is vague as to how a business must protect personal information collected from children. The COPPA Guidance requires that a company use “reasonable procedures” to protect such information from unauthorized access or use, but does not explain what “reasonable procedures” means. This is,… More

In Case You Missed It

The FTC settled with mobile advertising company InMobi for $950,000 in civil penalties, along with the implementation of a privacy program, based on the FTC’s charges that InMobi impermissibly tracked the locations of both adult and child consumers for the purpose of geo-targeted advertising.  The latter, of course, also implicated allegations of violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule. … More

In an age when many of us briskly scroll through website terms and conditions and check, “I agree” without thinking, how should businesses design their websites to obtain proper authorization to access users’ sensitive information? The announcement of the settlement of a pair of recent FTC complaints against PaymentsMD, a medical billing services provider and its former CEO, and the resulting settlement, provide some important guidance,… More

The Massachusetts Attorney General announced today that the former owners of a medical billing practice and four pathology groups have agreed to collectively pay $140,000 to settle allegations that medical records and patient billing information for “tens of thousands of Massachusetts patients were improperly disposed of at a public dump.”  Under the settlements, the defendants have agreed to pay a total of $140,000 for civil penalties, attorney fees,… More

In a settlement announced today by the Federal Trade Commission and Facebook, the social networking service agreed to settle “charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public,” according to the FTC’s press release.

In its complaint, the FTC alleged,… More

My slides from this presentation, "Compliance Approaches in the Changing HIT Privacy and Security Landscape:  How You Can Nurture a Culture of Health Information Security and Privacy" cover HIPAA and HITECH developments and compliance, with a focus on breaches and OCR settlements/penalties, including:

• §Resolution Agreement with Providence Health & Services–July 16, 2008
  Settlement:  $100,000
• §Resolution Agreement with CVS Pharmacy,…

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On July 6, 2010, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced a settlement with Health Net and its affiliates (Health Net of the Northeast, Inc., Health Net of Connecticut Inc., and parent companies UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Oxford Health Plans.) of a suit that cited failure to secure private patient medical records and financial information on nearly a half million Connecticut enrollees and promptly notify consumers endangered by the breach.… More