Imagine applying for unemployment benefits only to be denied because…you are already receiving them. Or getting a letter saying you’ve applied for unemployment when you still have a job. It’s happening to ID theft victims around the country as organized crime rings exploit a “perfect storm” that matches a [Keep reading]
“We are being robbed…our intellectual property is all the U.S. has left, and we are being fleeced of it.” The news was easily lost in the Covid-19 fray, but earlier this year, U.S. authorities blamed China for what many consider the most important data heist in history — the hack [Keep reading]
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]
Dan Solove, perhaps the leading legal scholar on privacy, has an amazing collection of magazine covers on his TechPrivacy.com website. One after another, they all lament that “Privacy is Dead.” The stories date from 2015….2010…1994…..1970! He calls this collection “the undying death of privacy.” “I am growing weary of [Keep reading]
The third episode of our privacy podcast, No Place to Hide, goes right to a pretty dark place. When they take away our privacy, what are they really taking away? Our humanity. Menny Barzily, CTO of the Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center at Tel-Aviv University, offered the most profound analysis. He [Keep reading]
Peer-to-peer payment app Venmo has long told users not to use the service to pay strangers for goods or services. That appears to be changing. The service has quietly added a feature it’s calling the “Venmo Purchase Program.” For a hefty, optional 3% non-refundable fee, which can be added on [Keep reading]
Erin and her son Noah think they’ve finally found a safe place to live, in a quiet Ohio town, invisible to Erin’s abusive ex-husband. But that life is shattered by a disturbing voice mail after a single photo of Noah accidentally appears on a school website. The call sends [Keep reading]
Erin and Noah, on the run from Erin’s abusive ex-husband, make their way from Ohio to Missouri as they search for a safe place to spend the night after a near-disaster that morning at Noah’s school. Even simple tasks like shutting off Internet service are dangerous and mind-numbingly frustrating. That’s [Keep reading]
This weekend, a million Australians downloaded a smartphone app called CovidSAFE that is designed to warn citizens if they’ve spent time near someone who has tested positive for the Covid-19. Voluntarily. That would have been an unthinkable breach of privacy just a couple on months ago. Nations around the world [Keep reading]
If you’re waiting for a widely-available Covid-19 vaccine to leave your house, you’re going to have to wait a couple of years. But if you have hope of life returning somewhat to normal any time before 2022, then you are rooting for clinical treatments for the disease — something that [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan