Amy Boyer, I sometimes say, was the first person murdered by the Internet. Twenty years ago this fall, she was gunned down in cold blood by stalker Liam Youens. He found Amy by hiring a data broker, and told everyone about that on his website. “It’s actually obscene what you [Keep reading]
I’ve been working on a special project for six months, and I’m thrilled to let you know that it releases on Monday. It’s a 6-episode series on the state of privacy in America, and in the world. Alia Tavakolian and I have been working since this spring, talking to dozens [Keep reading]
Identity theft targeting family members is soaring, as is what I’ll call “desperation fraud” — opening credit accounts with no intention of paying, and little effort to disguise the fraud. These are two very bad signs for the economy, according to a firm that studies ID theft on a wide [Keep reading]
What’s a “nudge unit” and how might it help your company, your employes or yourself be better at whatever you do? The folks at PeopleScience.com asked me to look into that recently. It’s pretty fascinating. I’ve been writing about cognitive biases and other human behavior research for some time now [Keep reading]
If I asked you to listen to a podcast about payments, you’d probably change the subject very quickly. But if I told you we were going to have a discussion about the future of money — and in turn, that discussion would really be about the future of freedom — [Keep reading]
Let’s hear it for the whistleblower! No, not that whistleblower. I mean the Google whistleblower, the brave programmer who stepped forward and alerted the world to Project Nightingale. Google has secretly acquired medical data on 50 million Americans in a partnership with hospital chain Ascension. We wouldn’t know anything about it [Keep reading]
I get asked about VPNs a lot — virtual private networks. In theory, VPNs make your Internet surfing safer by making sure that no one between you and your intended connecting can read your traffic. The real story is quite a bit more complicated than that, however. That’s the subject [Keep reading]
Remember the news that victims of the Equifax hack might get $125 from a class action settlement, only to hear later the real amount would probably be a few pennies? And getting those pennies required a bunch more paperwork steps? And the lawyers who negotiated the settlement were going to [Keep reading]
If you’ve landed on this page, you are probably in a bit of shock that your bank account could be drained by a criminal and your bank doesn’t seem to care, or think you are entitled to a “refund.” In many cases, you are — you just haven’t talked to [Keep reading]
Any time a company wants you to go all-in on its ecosystem, watch out. Bundling can seem like a cost-saver — getting your phone, TV, and Internet from one service, for example. But there’s always a cost. Often, that cost means tolerating inferior products, as many cable bundlers know. [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan