ARCHIVE – August 4, 2011 Imagine being able to sit down in a bar, snap a few photos of people and quickly learn who they are, who their friends are, where they live, what kind of music they like … even predict their Social Security number. Now, imagine you could [Keep reading]
Those of us who care about privacy issues spend a lot of time conjuring up stories about potential future disasters in an effort to focus attention on today’s dry policy decisions. If we don’t act now, one day, ordering ice cream will raise your health insurance rates; listening to this [Keep reading]
With all the sensitive news about Facebook and privacy hovering menacingly over the Internet this week, it seems an odd time for Starbucks to begin “forcing” consumers to register so they can connect to Wi-Fi. But that’s indeed what’s happening to coffee drinkers around the country. Many are sipping coffee [Keep reading]
I’m as tired of “hold my beer” jokes as you are, but this news seems to beg for one. While Equifax CEO Richard Smith was saying very little about his former firm’s massive hack during a three-hour hearing before Congress yesterday, Yahoo (now, called Oath, and part of Verizon) quietly [Keep reading]
Former Equifax CEO Richard Smith answered questions for three hours before Congress on Tuesday, but offered little new information for consumers concerned about perhaps the most important hack of personal information in America’s history. Smith took questions about the failure to install a security update that would have stopped the [Keep reading]
There’s lots of juicy details about the Equifax hack in a story published today by Bloomberg. It makes the strongest case yet that the massive heist of American SSNs was probably pulled off by a nation-state. That’s likely true about the huge theft of federal employee data back in 2015, [Keep reading]
If you wanted a vehicle car tag or a license in Montgomery County, Ala., this week, you were out of luck. Hackers knocked many county computers offline with a ransomware attack, local officials say. The probate office took the worst of the attack, which hit late Monday, so business licenses, [Keep reading]
Many Americans are learning the words “security freeze” recently, courtesy of Equifax. Really, they should be thanking their state lawmakers and a tireless group of consumer advocates. More important, it should give people new appreciation for the disaster that is the legal maneuvering called “state pre-emption,” and why consumers should [Keep reading]
I’ve always said ID theft is basically a marketing ploy. We stick with an outdated system that hurts people all so cashiers can try to upsell credit cards (“Do you want to save 20% today?”). And I’ve often said one of the best things that could happen would be publication [Keep reading]
A California mom is suing Disney and some of its software partners for allegedly collecting personal information about her kids through mobile phone game apps. I was on the TODAY show this week talking about it; you can click the image above to see the segment. There’s a novel legal [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan