Janet Yellen arguably becomes the most powerful woman in the world on Saturday, when she takes over as “Chairman” of the Federal Reserve. Take five minutes and get to know a little about her. The running joke about economists is that they equivocate on every question, answering always with a [Keep reading]
Add Michaels craft store to the list of retailers who’ve been shamed into admitting that hackers have possibly stolen credit card information from their systems. Here’s a pro tip: hiding this important information from consumers until a journalist finds out about it and tells everyone is bad for business. And [Keep reading]
(So happy to be back on CNBC and NBCNews.com again. I’m scheduled to be on television Friday night — NBC Nightly with Brian Williams — to discuss this story). A toxic combination of digital leashes, the hypnotic effects of technology, economic anxiety, and caffeine is encouraging workers to push [Keep reading]
Neiman Marcus on Thursday released several details about its Target-like credit card hacking incident, including these key points: Hackers had access to their systems from July 16 to Oct. 30. A malicious program attempted to “scrape” payment card information during that time frame Between those two dates, about 1.1 million [Keep reading]
(Editor’s note: Perhaps you saw the recent hubbub over a Princeton study suggesting Facebook will lose 80 percent of its users by 2017, and Facebook’s saracstic response that Princeton will lose half its enrollment by 2018. Here’s one woman’s story that — coincidentally — suggests Princeton may have the better [Keep reading]
Being a lawyer from Brazil, and having lived in New York before moving to Madrid to work in private practice as a privacy law expert, I am in a unique position to understand the different cultural and legal perspective of privacy in each country. And there is, no doubt, some [Keep reading]
This might be the most chilling text message I have ever heard of: “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.” I know many observers have long criticized those who write about privacy of being outfitted with tinfoil hats. Admittedly, we sometimes stretch to conjure up [Keep reading]
I’m getting this question a lot, and I know most people are in a big hurry, so I’ll give you a short answer and a long answer. Short answer: Take Target’s offer. It’s a valuable service and it’s free, particularly given the ever-expanding web of victims in this hacker attack. [Keep reading]
The report that explains how Target’s credit card systems were hacked contains this chilling sentence: “At the time of discovery, the malware had zero percent detection rate, which means fully updated antivirus engines on fully patched computers could not ID the malware.” It was posted online by The Wall Street [Keep reading]
Living room TVs, multi-media centers, and at least one refrigerator were used in a recent spam attack, e-mail security firm Proofpoint announced this week. Sure, this is a great opportunity to make jokes about spam not needing refrigeration. Chuckle for a moment, and then consider this: IDC predicts that more than [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan