The US Federal Emergency Management Agency exposed 2.3 million disaster survivors to possible identity theft and fraud by improperly sharing sensitive personal information with an outside company, according to an internal government watchdog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FEMA spokeswoman Lizzie Litzow said the agency had found no indication to suggest survivor data had been compromised.\u201cIt\u2019s not identified as a data breach. It\u2019s oversharing of information,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But FEMA\u2019s review only found that the contractor\u2019s computer systems had not been breached within the past 30 days because it did not keep records beyond that point, OIG said. FEMA told the watchdog it will not be able to completely resolve the problem until June 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is not the first time OIG has found that FEMA has mishandled personal information. A 2015 review revealed that agency personnel at a disaster-response center in California stored disaster survivor records in open, unsecured cardboard boxes. Investigators also found the agency mishandled data in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Office of Inspector General said FEMA had shared financial records and other sensitive information of people who had participated in an emergency shelter programme after being displaced by hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the California wildfires in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Inspector General\u2019s office said FEMA had shared participants\u2019 home addresses and bank account information with the contractor, along with necessary information like their names and birthdates.That \u201chas placed approximately 2.3 million disaster survivors at increased risk of identity theft and fraud,\u201d the Inspector General\u2019s office said in a report. The name of the contactor was redacted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FEMA awarded contracts to 1,660 different entities in the last fiscal year, according to federal contracting data, covering everything from food to construction equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The privacy breach is likely to prompt further criticism of an agency that was stretched to its limit in the second half of 2017 as it responded to a string of record-breaking hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency exposed 2.3 million disaster survivors to possible identity theft and fraud by improperly sharing sensitive personal information with an outside company, according to an internal government watchdog. FEMA spokeswoman Lizzie Litzow said the agency had found no indication to suggest survivor data had been compromised.\u201cIt\u2019s not identified as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57641,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57638\/revisions\/57641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}