By Gabriel M. Helmer and Aaron Wright
When Facebook changed its official terms of service earlier this month, what ensued was an explosive public outcry over who owns what users post to social networking sites. Tens of thousands of Facebook’s 175+ million users suddenly clicked that often-overlooked link at the bottom of the webpage and poured over the arcane and legalistic language comprising Facebook’s terms of service. … More
On Thursday, February 26, 2009, the FTC released its list of top consumer complaints and for the ninth year in a row, identity theft was the number one issue for consumers. See here for the FTC’s release. Out of 1,223,370 complaints made to law enforcement organizations, identity theft accounted for 313,982 complaints, around 26% or all consumer complaints in 2008. This represents a 20% increase in identity theft complaints since 2007. … More
For those who want to see the source document, we have provided this link to the text of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The health security and privacy provisions start at Section 13000, around page 112. More
On Tuesday, February 17, 2009, President Obama signed into law the widely-debated federal economic stimulus package, officially titled the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and with it, enacted the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act). Much of the media attention on the HITECH Act has focused on the policies promoting health information technology a topic that President Obama touted throughout his campaign. However, the HITECH Act also contains myriad regulations that expand the security and privacy provisions of the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA"),… More
On Thursday, February 12, 2009, the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation (OCABR) issued a public statement indicating that it is extending the May 1, 2009 deadline to comply with recent Massachusetts identity theft regulations until January 1, 2010.
The Massachusetts identity theft regulations affect entities that own, license, store or maintain personal information, including social security numbers, state identification numbers and financial account information,… More
It has been a bad week for the federal government’s own information security track record.
The first story comes from the FAA where hackers broke into the agency’s computer systems and stole personal information on some 45,000 individuals. The second story comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory, which confirmed the theft of 67 computers, 13 in the past year alone. In both instances the American people appear to have dogged a bullet. The electronic intrusion into the FAA appears to have been limited to a raid of personal information and did not interfere with air traffic control systems. … More
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s (ITRC) recently released report (.pdf) on data breaches in 2008, one of the top five causes of data breaches are what the ITRC labels “accidental exposure.” [For our earlier coverage on the ITRC’s report see this link.] The ITRC reports that accidental exposure amount to 95 of the 656 data breaches in 2008.
ITRC considers “accidental exposure”… More
According to a recently-released report from McAfee, the downturn in the economy is creating a “perfect information security risk storm.” The report, entitled “Unsecured Economies: Protecting Vital Information,” can be found here [Note: MacAfee requires registration to downloade the report]. McAfee bases its findings on a worldwide survey of 1,000 IT decision makers.
The McAfee Report makes four key findings: