Privacy

Your source for the latest privacy news and analysis.

Who's been reading my cell-phone records?
Nov. 26, 2008
If Verizon Wireless employees could snoop into then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama's cell-phone records, as the carrier acknowledged last week, then mobile subscribers may worry how well protected they are. They should, ...

Mozilla adds privacy mode to Firefox test build
Nov. 04, 2008
Developers working on Mozilla's next browser Tuesday added a privacy mode to the still-under-construction Firefox 3.1, a major milestone in the development of the upgrade.

Judge delays trial of accused Palin e-mail hacker
Nov. 17, 2008
The Tennessee college student indicted a month ago for allegedly breaking into the e-mail account of then-Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will face trial in May 2009, not next month as originally ...

Arizona state agency loses data on 40,000 children
Nov. 07, 2008
Arizona's Department of Economic Security (DES) is notifying the families of about 40,000 children that their personal data may have been compromised following the theft of several hard drives from a commercial storage ...

California privacy laws heighten need for HIPAA compliance
Oct. 07, 2008
Healthcare organizations that operate in California have two more good reasons to be sure that they comply with the data security and privacy requirements of the federal HIPAA law.

Anatomy of SQL injection attack
Oct. 07, 2008
While there are a number of security risks in the world of electronic commerce, SQL injection is one of the most common Web site attack techniques used to steal customer data such as credit card numbers, hold customer ...

New approach to a network-based data privacy application
Nov. 10, 2008
At SAP's big technical conference back in October, SAP and Cisco announced what they call a "composite application" for data privacy. I'd call it a pretty interesting way to bring the technologies of the two enterprise ...

Data privacy, security laws have far-reaching impact
Nov. 07, 2008
Massachusetts has enacted data privacy and data security regulations that will make it eke out California for the most wide ranging state privacy and security laws--laws that are likely to impact the policies, practices ...

My 10 tech-related wishes for the Obama administration
Nov. 05, 2008
10 technology-related wishes for the Obama administration, including an FCC reorganization and a DMCA revision.

Baylor Health warns of possible data compromise
Nov. 05, 2008
HealthTexas Provider Network, a subsidiary of the Dallas-based Baylor Health Care System, is notifying about 7,400 patients of the potential compromise of their Social Security Numbers (SSNs) and other personal ...

Managing the Social-Networking Data Sieve
Nov. 05, 2008
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites practically beg you to reveal even more information about yourself. Log on and you're asked: What are you doing? What are you doing right now? What are you ...

Minority Report
Nov. 04, 2008
In 1956 Philip K. Dick published a short story called Minority Report which was subsequently made into a moderately successful film starring Tom Cruise. If you saw the film or read the story you may remember that the ...

Microsoft defends IE 'phone home' feature, clarifies privacy policy
Sep. 14, 2008
Microsoft Friday defended the Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) tool that suggests sites based on the URLs typed into its address bar, saying that the browser "phones home" only a limited amount of information to Microsoft and ...

Arkansas man posts county e-mail records in privacy fight
Sep. 10, 2008
An Arkansas resident is posting the internal e-mail records of various officials in the Pulaski County clerk's office on his Web site in retaliation for what he calls the county's refusal to remove certain public ...

The privacy policy problem, Part 4: Reality hits home
Sep. 04, 2008
It's not going to be easy, but at least you can put your privacy-protection measures in place before you face a major PII disaster. Keep your eyes open, follow up on abuse of your corporate identity, and make your own ...

Privacy group: Identity-theft monitoring service a waste
Jul. 30, 2008
Consumers who sign up for identity-theft monitoring services may be getting a lot less protection against some common types of fraud than they assume they are, according to an online guide released Monday by the Privacy ...

Telecommuting poses security, privacy risks
Jul. 29, 2008
Telecommuting poses security and privacy risks, according to a study based on a survey of 73 corporate and government organizations conducted by consulting firm Ernst & Young with the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy ...

Tech tricks and treats of 2008
Oct. 29, 2008
Growing up, you probably loved Halloween: Dressing up as your favorite superhero or princess, telling ghost stories, eating so much candy that your mom warned you your teeth were going to fall out. Of course, there was ...

New European data protection rules likely years away
Oct. 27, 2008
Europe's data-protection regulatory framework needs updating, but it will be two to three years before companies even see proposals, Europe's top data protection official said Monday.

Microsoft bug, Greenspan speaks, Yahoo cuts
Oct. 24, 2008
Soon after Microsoft released a patch for a critical bug in its Windows Server software, attack code surfaced, and by Friday afternoon an early sample of the code was out, which led to the week ending on a warning note. ...

Researchers find problems with RFID passport cards
Oct. 24, 2008
RFID tags used in two new types of border-crossing documents in the U.S. are vulnerable to snooping and copying, a researcher said on Thursday.

Where the US presidential candidates stand on tech issues
Oct. 20, 2008
The 2008 presidential election gives CIOs and other IT executives a choice of two major-party candidates who are interested in technology-related issues. While the U.S. economy and the war in Iraq have dominated the ...

EFF, ACLU slam carrier immunity law
Oct. 17, 2008
A U.S. law that allows telecom carriers to be granted immunity in some suits alleging illegal government surveillance is unconstitutional, two civil-rights groups argued late Thursday.

A glimpse of the (networked) future
Oct. 15, 2008
Charles Stross' vision of how networking -- the human kind and machine kind -- evolves is thought-provoking. His ideas on privacy and identity authentication alone are worth the price of admission. Like most great ...

Verizon exposes the wrong 1,200 e-mail addresses
Oct. 09, 2008
A Net Buzz reader on Verizon: "In a period of three hours I received 14 e-mails promoting Verizon's 'Secure the Information. Secure the Infrastructure' webinar series, and three e-mails promoting their '2008 Data Breach ...