Consumer Regulator Finds Prison Vendor Dallied After Data Breach

Prison communications provider Global Tel*Link Corp. waited too long to notify hundreds of thousands of customers of a large data breach, according to a Thursday administrative complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission.

The Virginia-based company—which sells prisoners services to contact, and receive money from, the outside world—faces claims it engaged in unfair and deceptive data security practices by waiting nine months after discovering an exposure of users’ personal data. When it did alert customers, it did so for only 45,000 of the potentially hundreds of thousands affected.

While Global Tel*Link marketed strong security practices as a “cornerstone” of its ...