Privacy Archive
>> Stolen Medical Data, SSNs, Personal Information For Sale On Offshore Servers
0 Comments Published June 19th, 2008 in Business, Consumer, Internet, News, Privacy, TaxFinjan, a data security services firm, reported today that more than 500 megabytes of stolen medical and business data and Social Security Numbers (SSNs) have been found on “crimeservers” in Malaysia and Argentina. The data were stolen from systems for a major airline and a health care provider using widely available hacker toolkits, [...]
>> It’s “Official”: Economic Stimulus Payment Is The New Phishing Scam
0 Comments Published June 6th, 2008 in Business, Consumer, Internet, News, PrivacyIt was inevitable, and now it’s “official”: the 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment is the new Nigerian scam.
A few of my clients this week reported receiving one or more phishing emails about the 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment from the US government. Then I received one myself this morning. (”Gee, how could the [...]
>> Legal Outsourcing Can Compromise Attorney-Client Privilege
2 Comments Published May 28th, 2008 in Courts, News, Privacy, TaxThe ABA Journal is reporting another development in attorney-client privilege concerns with the booming legal outsourcing market. Here are the questions:
Does the monitoring of cross-border communications by the United States government under the Patriot Act and the Wiretapping Act and the lack of US constitutional protection in foreign countries violate an attorney’s duty to [...]
>> How Cheaply Can Encrypted Personal Data on a Hard Drive Be Unlocked and Stolen?
1 Comment Published February 23rd, 2008 in Business, Consumer, News, PrivacyIt will typically cost an identity thief around $2.99.
An article in today’s New York Times announced that researchers discovered that anyone can unlock data encryption on a PC hard drive merely by opening the case and blasting the chips with a can of compressed air, causing the data to remain in memory, allowing easy access [...]
Privacy advocates have just established a noncommercial website that allowing visitors to request their FBI Files, as well as files from several other governmental agencies.
http://www.GetMyFBIfile.com
ID Theft: What the Federal Government Isn’t Telling Victims
1 Comment Published August 30th, 2007 in Business, Consumer, PrivacyHere’s an interesting article on identity theft and social security earnings that was passed to me by a colleague. According to the article, the IRS, the Social Security Administration (SSA), and the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS - formerly the INS) all collect information about double and multiple uses of the same social security [...]
Michigan Requires Photo ID to Vote
0 Comments Published July 20th, 2007 in Consumer, Courts, Michigan Law, News, PrivacyThis week, the Michigan Supreme Court upheld a 1996 never-enforced voter ID law, which requires Michigan voters to produce valid photo IDs in order to vote. The law has been the subject of controversy on both privacy and economic grounds — privacy advocates condemn any linking of basic constitutional rights and liberties with identification [...]
Legal Issues in Posting Private Email to Mailing Lists and Blogs
2 Comments Published July 17th, 2007 in Business, Consumer, Copyright, PrivacyI recently answered a commonly-asked question about the legalities of forwarding email. Forwarding email is very easy to do; the user just clicks on a button and types in an address and the entire email is sent off into cyberspace to another reader. As any user of the Internet knows — this is, [...]
IRS to Allow Selling of Tax Data
0 Comments Published April 15th, 2006 in Business, Consumer, News, Privacy, TaxIf you ask me, this is the Mother Of All Privacy Violations. My tax return data?
The IRS has proposed a rule to allow the tax preparation industry to disclose Joe American’s tax return information, collected while preparing returns for consumers, to third parties. Of course, this is only after they have received your [...]
Spyware May Be an Illegal Trespass on Home Computers
0 Comments Published November 2nd, 2005 in Consumer, Internet, PrivacyA federal trial court in Chicago ruled that the ancient legal doctrine of trespass to chattels (trespassing on personal property, rather than on someone’s land or real estate) may potentially apply to spyware on your computer.
The Chicago Lawsuit
In Sotelo v. DirectRevenue, the computer owner filed a complaint against various companies alleging that they caused spyware [...]