Records silently wrong
Migrations, imports, rounding, timezone and currency errors.
Severity: data. Attached to 15 of 46 published product types, backed by 20 evidence records.
Product types that carry it
| Product type | Grade | Note for this type | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| mobile banking app | practitioner single incident, no second source | An overnight core banking batch fails and is rolled back untested, so the app shows wrong balances, posts wrong interest and builds statements that do not match the ledger. | |
| neobank | practitioner single incident, no second source | The app's own ledger of customer balances drifts from the partner bank's pooled account records, and nobody can say whose money is where. | |
| lending platform | practitioner single incident, no second source | The credit bureau file reports an on-time borrower as delinquent because servicing status and furnished status drift apart. | |
| insurance app | primary | A data load maps insurance scores to the wrong rating tier, and renewals go out at premiums that differ from the rates filed with the state. | |
| accounting and invoicing SaaS | primary | A bank feed re-imports transactions after a provider outage, and the duplicates sit in the books until removed by hand before reconciling; and ledger entries edited or deleted afterwards leave no trace. | |
| expense management tool | primary | A phone photo of a receipt is compressed until the amount is unreadable, or detached from its expense line after an edit, and fails an audit. | |
| electronic health record system | secondary | A medication list or allergy sent to another site's record arrives with the wrong drug or no allergy, and the receiving pharmacist has no sign it changed. | |
| clinical trial management software | primary | A hosted eCOA or EDC loses trial data or its audit trail during a change, so endpoint data can no longer be verified against source. | |
| loyalty program app | primary | Member balances lose value when two programs merge and points convert to the new program at the wrong ratio. | |
| email marketing platform | primary | A mail scanner that prefetches the List-Unsubscribe link removes a subscriber who never clicked, and the audience shrinks with no complaint recorded. | |
| ERP system | secondary | A feeder-system interface carries fewer fields than the legacy one, so general ledger postings arrive incomplete and staff patch them by hand. | |
| e-signature service | primary | A document edited or a page swapped after the first signer finishes still carries that signature, and the audit trail does not record the change. | |
| desktop application | primary | The updater or launcher script deletes a folder it thinks it owns, and the user Documents or home folder goes with it. | |
| data pipeline | primary | A load step silently drops rows past a file size limit, or the nightly dump job fails and its alert email bounces, and downstream tables look complete. | |
| fleet and logistics tracking | primary | A dispatcher's edit to a driver's duty-status log overwrites the original entry instead of keeping it and asking the driver to confirm. |
Tests that address it
- data integrity and migration testing: mandatory for this risk on 15 product types.
- regression suite: mandatory for this risk on 8 product types.
- integration tests: mandatory for this risk on 11 product types.
- unit tests: mandatory for this risk on 7 product types.
- release smoke tests: mandatory for this risk on 4 product types.
- compliance checks: mandatory for this risk on 2 product types.
- end-to-end functional tests: mandatory for this risk on 1 product types.
- device and browser compatibility: mandatory for this risk on 1 product types.
- resilience and failure testing: mandatory for this risk on 1 product types.
Evidence
ev-0033regulatorprimary
21 CFR Part 11: Electronic Records; Electronic Signatures, U.S. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations
Part 11 requires validation, audit trails and signature controls for electronic records submitted to or kept for the FDA.
published undated · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0040post-mortemprimary
UK Open Banking customers unable to create or manually renew bank feeds, Xero
Supports dependency-failure and data-corruption for accounting SaaS: the vendor's own incident report says an open banking provider outage stopped bank feed imports, and transactions imported after recovery left duplicates that customers had to remove by hand before reconciling.
published 2022-12-19 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0044regulatorprimary
Rev. Proc. 97-22: Books and records; electronic storage; imaging (Internal Revenue Bulletin 1997-13), Internal Revenue Service
All books and records reproduced by the electronic storage system must exhibit a high degree of legibility and readability when displayed on a video display terminal and when reproduced in hardcopy.
Supports data-corruption for accounting SaaS and expense management: taxpayers who keep books, invoices or receipt images in an electronic system need controls against alteration or deletion and legible reproductions, which both product types hold for their customers.
published 1997-03-31 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0053regulatorprimary
Warning Letter: Applied Therapeutics, Inc. (MARCS-CMS 696833), U.S. Food and Drug Administration
FDA cannot verify the accuracy, consistency, and completeness of study data collected for critical eCOAs
A sponsor received an FDA warning letter after a contracted electronic outcome assessment system had trial data and its audit trails deleted, so the endpoint data could not be verified; this is the record-retention failure trial software must prevent.
published 2024-12-03 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0054regulatorprimary
Guideline on computerised systems and electronic data in clinical trials (EMA/INS/GCP/112288/2023), European Medicines Agency, GCP Inspectors Working Group
Where the randomisation is stratified by factors inputted by the user, all the combinations of the strata should be tested to confirm that the allocation is occurring from the correct randomisation table.
EMA inspectors expect trial systems to keep a secure audit trail, restrict unblinded data to named roles, test emergency unblinding and test randomisation strata and dose calculations in response technology, which covers data corruption and participant harm in trial software.
published 2023-03-09 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0077regulatorsecondary
Electronic Health Record Modernization Caused Pharmacy-Related Patient Safety Issues Nationally and at the VA Central Ohio Healthcare System in Columbus, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Inspector General
Government inspection report: a software coding error sent inaccurate medication and allergy information from new EHR sites to legacy EHR sites. Supports data-corruption for EHR systems that exchange medication lists and allergies with another record system.
published 2024-03-21 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0082regulatorprimary
Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses, Internal Revenue Service
Supports regulatory-penalty for an expense management tool: reimbursements count as an accountable plan only with adequate accounting, documentary evidence such as receipts and return of excess advances; otherwise the employer reports them as wages.
published undated · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0095court-or-fineprimary
Official Order of the Texas Commissioner of Insurance No. 2026-10013 (Occidental Fire & Casualty Company of North Carolina), Texas Department of Insurance
Through review of a consumer complaint, the department discovered that a data loading error resulted in Occidental charging rates different than those on file.
Supports data-corruption and money-loss for an insurance app: a data translation error in insurance scores fed the rating engine, renewals were charged rates different from the filed rates, and the insurer owed restitution.
published 2026-07-08 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0096court-or-fineprimary
Official Order of the Texas Commissioner of Insurance No. 2026-10039 (Germania Companies), Texas Department of Insurance
Supports data-corruption and money-loss for an insurance app: a data loading error made the rating system use incorrect data to calculate auto renewal premiums, producing overcharges and undercharges that required restitution.
published 2026-07-21 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0099court-or-fineprimary
CFPB Orders Hyundai to Pay [amount] for Widespread Credit Reporting Failures, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Supports data-corruption for a lending platform: a loan servicer's systems furnished inaccurate account information to credit reporting companies and borrowers were reported delinquent through no fault of their own.
published 2022-07-26 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0103regulatorprimary
Consumer Financial Protection Circular 2024-07: Design, marketing, and administration of credit card rewards programs, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The circular treats reducing the value of rewards already earned, and point conversions after a merger that lose value, as possible unfair or deceptive practices. Written for card rewards; it transfers to any points program where earned balances carry value, so it supports money-loss, data-corruption and regulatory-penalty for loyalty program apps.
published 2024-12-18 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0113court-or-fineprimary
FCA fines RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank Ltd [amount] for IT failures, Financial Conduct Authority
When it noticed problems with the upgrade it decided to uninstall it without first testing the consequences of that action.
FCA penalty after a batch software upgrade and untested rollback left customers unable to use online banking or see accurate balances, with incorrect interest applied and inaccurate statements. Supports data-corruption and regulatory-penalty for banking apps that display balances and interest from the core ledger.
published 2014-11-20 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0120court-or-fineprimary
Synapse Financial Technologies, Inc. (CFPB enforcement action), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
CFPB complaint that a banking-as-a-service middleware provider did not keep records of where consumer funds sat or keep them matched with partner bank records, so consumers of fintech apps lost access to funds. Supports data-corruption and dependency-failure for neobanks that hold balances through partner banks.
published undated · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0193post-mortemprimary
PHE statement on delayed reporting of COVID-19 cases, Public Health England (GOV.UK)
Every one of these cases received their COVID-19 test result as normal and all those who tested positive were advised to self-isolate.
Official government statement: result files exceeded a size limit in the data load process, so positive cases were left out of the daily reported figures. Supports data-corruption and wrong-decisions for analytics dashboards and BI tools fed by file loads, since both report from the loaded data.
published 2020-10-04 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0205post-mortemprimary
Postmortem of database outage of January 31, GitLab
This means we were never aware of the backups failing, until it was too late.
Official post-mortem: a scheduled dump command exited with a version error, its failure emails were rejected, and a manual delete command ran against the wrong host. Supports data-corruption for command-line tools and for scheduled data jobs whose failures go unseen.
published 2017-02-10 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0223post-mortemprimary
Updated version of Windows 10 October 2018 Update released to Windows Insiders, Microsoft
This occurred if Known Folder Redirection (KFR) had been previously enabled, but files remain in the original “old” folder location vs being moved to the new, redirected location.
Official post-mortem: an installed update removed user files left in the original Desktop and Documents folders after the folders had been redirected. Transfers to desktop applications whose installers or updaters clean up user folders.
published 2018-10-09 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0224practitionerpractitioner
Moved ~/.local/share/steam. Ran steam. It deleted everything on system owned by user., GitHub (steam-for-linux issue tracker)
Until I looked and saw that steam had apparently deleted everything owned by my user recursively from the root directory.
Named user report: the launcher script of a desktop application deleted all files owned by the user after its data folder was moved. Supports data-corruption for desktop applications with self-repair or uninstall scripts.
published 2015-01-14 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0230standardprimary
RFC 8058: Signaling One-Click Functionality for List Email Headers, IETF
Standard for one-click unsubscribe: it exists because anti-spam software that fetches URLs in email headers triggered unsubscriptions nobody asked for. Supports data-corruption of subscriber status and the header requirement for email marketing platforms.
published undated · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0234regulatorsecondary
DOD Financial Management: Implementation Weaknesses in Army and Air Force Business Systems Could Jeopardize DOD's Auditability Goals, U.S. Government Accountability Office
Government audit report on ERP rollouts: it records deficiencies in data accuracy, an inability to produce auditable financial reports, manual workarounds, and an interface specification with less functionality than the legacy one. Supports data-corruption and wrong-decisions for ERP systems.
published 2012-02-28 · verified 2026-10-07
ev-0241regulatorprimary
49 CFR Part 395 Subpart B: Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs), U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (eCFR)
Edits requested by any system or by any person other than the driver must require the driver's electronic confirmation or rejection.
Applies where the fleet platform provides electronic logging of drivers' hours: the rule requires accurate records, annotated edits confirmed by the driver, and recorded malfunctions and data diagnostic events.
published undated · verified 2026-10-07