Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 9 Jul 2012 15:11:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120709/02461119620/australian-government-loses-dvd-with-personal-info-everyone-its-stay-smart-online-program.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120709/02461119620/australian-government-loses-dvd-with-personal-info-everyone-its-stay-smart-online-program.shtml Slashdot points us to a bit of irony, in which it appears the Australian government ended up exposing the personal info of a bunch of citizens who had signed up for "stay smart online" alerts. Apparently, one way to stay smart online is to not sign up for "stay smart online" alerts from the Australian government. The issue was that a contractor who was running the program, AusCERT, had put all of the info -- including "usernames, email addresses, memorable phrases (used as password reminders) and cryptographically hashed passwords" -- onto a DVD and mailed it to another contractor who was taking over the program. And... it got lost in the mail. At least the passwords were hashed. But, you'd expect to be a bit safer than that when giving your information to the government for a "stay smart online" program...

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