ELGIN (STMW) — Officials from a northwest suburban medical clinic remain silent about claims they allowed sensitive information on AIDS patients to be leaked, the Courier-News is reporting.
Calls to the Open Door Clinic of Greater Elgin, 164 Division St. in Elgin, were not returned. The allegations, made in a lawsuit filed last week in the 16th Judicial Circuit Court in Geneva by five AIDS patients, claimed the clinic failed to secure personal info, including their HIV/AIDS status, making it available to the public.
The clinic is a non-profit organization that treats people with HIV/AIDS and offers an array of services including lab testing, counseling and alternative care.
According to the complaint, a staff computer with a client list of more than 200 patients was accessed and became public domain because the computer had a file-sharing, peer-to-peer program installed — the same type used for popular music downloading sites such as Napster.
Once the information was made public, it was “searched, accessed, downloaded and re-shared by various P2P file sharing users throughout the world from May 26, 2008, through the present,” according to the complaint.
In at least two cases, information later was stolen and used to commit identity fraud, the complaint says.
One of those who allegedly downloaded the list, according to the complaint, was a known identity thief from Apache Junction, Ariz., who continued to share the information on other file-sharing networks.
None of the plaintiffs in the case was named in the suit, which stated only that they were from Elgin, Aurora, St. Charles, Naperville and Schaumburg.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for May 13.
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services