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US military families’ private data compromised

Private information of many US army families has been compromised. (file photo)

Thousands of US army families have their private information exposed in a couple of security breaches, a report says.

The families’ medical histories, social security numbers, home addresses and child daycare information were made vulnerable, an NBC report said.

According to the inspector general of the federal General Services Administration (GSA), the agency that suffered the breaches, as many as 8,000 of the 9,000 army families that use an army subsidy program may have had their information compromised.

These families were all part of the US Army Fee Assistance program, a program that has struggled to provide subsidies to army parents who use private daycare services.

Internal auditors found the GSA allowed contractors access to private information of families without first completing background checks and without requiring those contractors sign non-disclosure agreements.

The report said unauthorized people or contractors have viewed the private information of at least 82 of those families.

The auditors found the contractors included a person with a criminal warrant for his or her arrest and two people with financial problems, including a personal bankruptcy, the report added.

In a second breach, the agency failed to properly encrypt the families’ personal information in a government database, auditors said. That breach was disclosed to other government agencies in June.

The US House Oversight Committee reportedly launched an investigation into the Army Fee Assistance program following the revelations.


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