How do you make a data breach even worse? You notify the victims that they are dead.

The headline says it all: Some Treasure Valley residents receiving letters from Saint Alphonsus saying they are dead The situation started routinely enough — an employee’s email account was compromised.  In this case, the access was used to send out spam. Somehow, however, in the process of sending breach notifications, there was a mail merge error. As Saint Alphonsus explained: We have learned that some of our patients have received a letter notifying them of an email security event and unfortunately, when the letters were generated, a mail merge issue created an incorrect status for some patients, addressing them as deceased or a minor. So first an employee’s email account gets compromised and then their vendor has a screw-up. It was not a great month for the hospital, it seems.DataBreaches.netRead More