A retired Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund employee improperly emailed himself the contents of a database containing the personal information of 13,000 retired police officers.

What type of personal information? Names, addresses, Social Security numbers.

What was the response? The state sent notification letters to victims.

Details: Officials do not believe the unidentified former employee was going to use the database for malicious reasons, so police do not plan to charge him.

Source: cincinnati.com, Cincinnati Enquirer, “Database security breached,” Aug. 27.

A paper jam in a mail-inserting machine is being blamed for 2,845 welfare benefit renewal letters going to the wrong welfare recipients in Pennsylvania.

How many victims? 1,280 of the packets contained Social Security numbers.

What was the response? The state Department of Public Welfare has mailed notification letters to victims and placed a 90-day fraud alert on their credit files.

Details: The department is working with the inserter manufacturer to determine what went wrong. As a new policy, the vendor will hand check every 50th packet to ensure it is going to the right destination.

Source: pennlive.com, The Patriot-News, “Welfare renewals take a wrong turn,” Aug. 26.

Standardized exam preparatory company The Princeton Review errantly posted the personal information and test scores of more than 100,000 Florida and Virginia students on its website.

What type of personal information? Names, birth dates, ethnicities, test scores.

How many victims? One filed contained data on 34,000 public school students in Sarasota, Fla., where the school district was using The Princeton Review to measure student performance. Another exposed file contained the names and birth dates of 74,000 students in the Fairfax County, Va. school district, which had hired the company for a similar reason.

What happened? The company moved its website to a new internet provider in June, which may have caused password protection to be lost and the files to be publicly accessible, The Princeton Review said.

Details: The company is investigating how many people may have accessed the files.

Source:nytimes.com, The New York Times, “Student Files Are Exposed on Web Site,” Aug. 19.

Hackers broke into a computer server belonging to Norfolk, Va.-based Dominion Enterprises, possibly exposed the personal information of tens of thousands of people.

How many victims? 92,095 applicants who submitted credit applications to the InterActive Financial Marketing Group, a division of Dominion.

What type of personal information? Names, Social Security numbers, addresses and birth dates.

What happened? The company is remaining tight-lipped on specifics, only saying that the intrusion happened between November 2007 and February 2008.

What was the response? Dominion is notifying victims via letter and plans to offer them one year of free credit monitoring.

Quote: “We deeply regret this incident and apologize for the concern and inconvenience it has caused.” - Dominion President and CEO Conrad Hall

Source: Business Wire news release, MarketWatch.com, “Dominion Enterprises Discloses Data Breach in Business Division,” Aug. 18.

The confidential information of current and former employees of Charter Communications was being stored on laptops that were stolen.

How many victims? More than 9,000 employees nationwide.

What type of personal information? Names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and driver’s license numbers.

What happened?Several laptops were stolen last month from the cable provider’s Greenville, S.C. office.

What was the response? The company is offering victims one year of free credit monitoring.

Details: Charter said it has no reason to believe any of the information will be misused. Police are investigating the theft.

Source: wyff4.com, WYFF-TV, “Laptops with cable company workers’ data stolen,” Aug. 13.

Hackers may have compromised the personal information of 9,100 students, faculty and staff at the University of Texas at Dallas.

What type of personal information? Names, Social Security numbers, home addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers.

How many victims? 9,100, including 4,406 students who were on the Dean’s List or graduated between 2000 and 2003.

What happened? The university is releasing few details about how the attack occurred.

Quote: “We would like to minimize the impact of such an event, but we find no indication that the information has been disclosed, disseminated or used to anyone’s detriment.” - Jim Gary, the university’s vice president and chief information officer.

Source: dallasnews.com, The Dallas Morning News, “Computer breach at UT Dallas may have exposed students’ personal info,” July 31.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia accidentally mailed 202,000 benefit letters to the wrong addresses.

What type of personal information? Patient names and identification numbers, with a small number containing Social Security numbers. Amounts owed and the name of their medical provider also were included.

What happened? “Explanation of Benefit” letters were mistakenly sent to the wrong addresses because of a computer system glitch, which has since been resolved.

What was the response? Victims will receive one year of free credit monitoring. The number of affected people may not be as high as 202,000 because some people received multiple letters.

Details: Blue Cross and Blue Shield may have violated Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act regulations, experts say. The insurer plans to remove Social Security numbers from all future mailings.

Quote: “This is very, very serious.” - State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine

Source: ajc.com, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Private medical data exposed,” July 29.