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 We stick with an outdated system that hurts people all so cashiers can try to upsell credit cards (“Do you want to save 20% today?”).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]
Facebook should release secret research it has done to psychologically analyze teen-age users, U.S. consumer groups demanded on Wednesday, after reports surfaced in Australian media that the social media giant had come with up techniques to predict kids’ emotional states — placing them in buckets like “defeated,” “overwhelmed,” “stressed,” “stupid,” “useless,” and [Keep reading]
It reads like a typical Internet hoax that catches viral fire: “Stand with me at Standing Rock,” the post begins. “The Morton County Sheriff’s Department has been using Facebook check-ins to find out who is at Standing Rock in order to target them in attempts to disrupt the prayer camps.” [Keep reading]
The FCC today ruled that when it comes to your personal information, Internet service providers are more like telephone companies and less like websites — and so it has limited ISPs ability to make money by digitally stalking you and selling that data. The ruling represents a rare win for [Keep reading]
Using social networks and sharing personal information online can dramatically increase your risk for fraud, a new study has found. It makes sense that consumers who disclose the most about themselves online are at greater risk of becoming fraud victims. But the study claims their increased risk is probably more [Keep reading]
I talked to NBC’s Pete Williams yesterday about the encryption debate that has raged since the Paris terror attacks. The debate got additional legs when New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance released a white paper Wednesday arguing that Apple and Google should be forced to include backdoors in their smartphones. [Keep reading]
Hey parents! You won’t believe the contracts your kids have been roped into. Like a fine print virus spreading quickly around the globe, under-aged teen-agers are suddenly being shrink-wrapped into contracts of dubious enforceability all around the web. The situation highlights a conundrum for companies targeting the 13-17 crowd: how [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan