1000 New Year Honour recipients’ data exposed online, thousands of Skype calls listened to without security protection, a dismissed co-founder stole €1,1 million to revenge.

The addresses of the recipients were published inadvertently on the official website. The information exposed details of politicians, police officers and famous personalities (Sir Elton John among them). The data was open to public less than a day, and the government representatives admit to posting the addresses in error and has to face commentary about data protection weak point.

Trying to increase Skype call quality and enhance Cortana functionality Microsoft contract employees in China appeared to have listened to conversations without any data protection means – they would use their personal computers at home and access recordings on the Internet via a special app during about two years. Login details to access recordings were emailed to contractors in plain text.

One of the co-founders of a startup got dismissed after a conflict situation between the managers. The disgruntled employee took 182 bitcoins from the company which equaled €1,1 million. The violator was implementing his scheming from 2018 till 2019 and committed the third crypto theft known in France. Crypto currency was taken multiple times, each amount was less than that which would trigger an alert. The crime was investigated as a serious cybercrime, the violator was accused of stealing money, unauthorised access to the data processing system and criminal manipulations.