Data breach at recruitment site

By Aoife Carr, The Irish Times

Gardaí are investigated a security breach at the recruitment website RecruitIreland.com.

It is thought that names and e-mail addresses of those registered with the site were accessed for spamming purposes. The site was shut down yesterday afternoon when the breach was noticed.

Gardaí  and the Data Protection Commissioner have been informed.

CVs, usernames and passwords are not thought to have been compromised.

In a statement, the company said it was taking the incident very seriously. It warned users not to reply to any spam email or comply with any requests for information such as bank account details.

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 Here is the official statement from RecruitIreland.com

Databreach on RecruitIreland.com

We are sending you this email to notify you of a breach of our data today. At 1.50pm we became aware of the breach. Following this we received several spam emails similar to the one below (which you may also have received by now).

By Ailish O'Hora, Irish Independent

Gardai are expected to send a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the coming weeks following an investigation into the suspected sale by a civil servant of personal information on hundreds of claim-ants to a private detective.

The civil servant, who was working in the Department of Social Protection, has been suspended and gardai and the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) have been investigating the incident for a number of weeks.

It is understood the DPC has also raided the private investigator's office and the premises of three insurance firms to gather information on the claimants.

By Ronan McGreevy, The Irish Times

THE GAA’s entire membership database containing details of over half a million people was stolen and copied, it has emerged.

The details included dates of birth, mobile and landline numbers and e-mail addresses along with sensitive medical information about 544 players. It also contains names and addresses of the GAA’s 167,175 players who are under 18.

The theft was first notified to the association on November 19th, but the information was only made public yesterday.