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In the latest installment of Ask the Expert, CEO Kent Lawson explains how different modes of information transmission are treated differently by the law. For example, the government needs a court order to look at your email, but not at your phone records or texts.
Click to read more and find out just what sensitive personal information Google may be handing over to the government about you. Best to assume you are being listened to or watched when doing anything online, indeed.
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Mark your calendars and save the date — here is a comprehensive list of events in support of Data Privacy Day, the annual, international day of awareness designed to educate people on privacy issues and how to safeguard personal information.
Some of the events listed below are being held on January 28 Data Privacy Day) while other events are being held later in the week.
Take your pick from live in-person events, free webinars, a Facebook Live event (live tweet using hashtag #dpd13), and even a “lightening round” 3-minute-each privacy debate hosted by HP Labs.
What are the boundaries for collecting personal data and information for marketing purposes?
Today in Las Vegas, at the Consumer Electronics Show, two leaders from the Future of Privacy Forum will be on a panel discussion that explores the boundaries for collecting such personal information.
As consumers, we’ve almost come to expect an extreme amount of online tracking. But the Future of Privacy speakers will point out some interesting inconsistencies with those attitudes. For example, the grocer who bombards shoppers with questions about other lifestyle choices (e.g., where they vacationed, what movies they recently viewed, what books they read, where their children attend college) does breach norms of appropriateness.
Recently, a man named William Binney sat down for a remarkably scary interview with RT, an online magazine.
Binney worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) for many years before resigning in 2001, stating that he didn’t want to be a part of an agency that he believed was betraying the Constitution.
In his interview with RT, Binney makes the jaw-dropping claim that nearly every email sent by a U.S. citizen is being captured and stored by the FBI in huge data warehouses.
But here’s what’s interesting about our online correspondence: even the FBI has no idea what they are collecting. Read more startling news in the article. Read More
The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against Wyndham Worldwide Corporation and three of its subsidiaries for alleged data-security failures and weak security systems.
Even after the hotel chain’s first-known data breach in 2008, Wyndham failed to fix its massive security vulnerabilities, alleges the FTC.
As a result, Wyndham’s security was breached two more times in less than two years. Read More
Q: “I’ve recently heard about something called TPP that apparently criminalizes content sharing on the web. This worries me, because I share things all the time! Could you tell me more about what TPP is and what it might do? Would it make me a criminal?”
A: TPP, which stands for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is a trade agreement currently being discussed by 10 nations that would create highly restrictive intellectual property laws around the world.
This trade agreement raises serious concerns regarding due process, privacy laws, and freedom of expression. If it is ratified, it will completely rewrite intellectual property laws.
TPP would completely change how information is shared on the Internet. It would force ISPs to police our online activity, and give media companies the power to shut down websites and remove content at will.
Sounds pretty scary, huh? Read on to find out more. Read More
Have you ever heard of a company called Acxiom? If you’re like most Americans, probably not. But while you may not know much about Acxiom, they sure know a lot about you.
Acxiom knows more about you than the IRS, FBI, Facebook, and Google. It’s likely that they know your age, race, sex, marital status, education background, political leanings, household income, and much more.
Forrester Research once said Acxiom — headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas — “demonstrated surprising nimbleness in modernizing its offering and arguably leads the industry with its digital solutions,” but what does this $1.15 billion-a-year company do behind the scenes?
Hackers have broken into an Atlanta-based payments processor, Global Payments, Inc, potentially accessing more than 50,000 Visa or Mastercard accounts between January 21 and February 25.
The extent of the breaches are still unknown, and Global Payments didn’t disclose what type of data had been accessed.
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Online privacy and security have become a central part of our new digital reality, and the fifth-annual Data Protection Day this Saturday, January 28 is a great opportunity to foster a societal debate around data privacy issues.
Last year we chatted with Leonardo Cervera, the man responsible for the first Data Privacy Day event in the United States. He spoke at length about data privacy and his overall background and interest in keeping people safer online, among other topics.
Cervera noted that, “As a consumer, I am concerned that business considerations might prevail over my dignity as a human being. The increasing difficulty of enforcing data protection over the Internet also worries me.”
This year, people are still worried about those same issues.
That’s part of the reason the National Cyber Security Alliance says it will host and participate in various events around the world designed to raise awareness about privacy issues. The NCSA, a non-profit public-private partnership focused on cybersecurity awareness, includes representatives from Intel, eBay, Microsoft, Intuit, and Comcast.
According to the NCSA, one of this year’s biggest events will be a privacy debate — streaming live on Facebook — on Thursday, January 26 from 9:00am-11:45am at the George Washington University Law School. Read More
You give third-parties permission to access your data and information every day when you use social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Clean up those permissions now with a new privacy and security focused site, MyPermissions.org. Read More
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