Data Privacy and Cybersecurity Posts

Wells Fargo Learns That Recording Calls In California Can Be Costly

Apr 5, 2016

Wells Fargo Learns That Recording Calls In California Can Be Costly

In the past few years, many organizations such as Capital One, Bass Pro Outdoor, and the Cosmopolitan Hotel have faced class actions alleging violations of California’s call recording law.  This week, California’s Attorney General demonstrated that her office, working with state prosecutors, will also vigorously enforce the law under the state’s criminal statutes.  Attorney General…

Latest German Sausage? Privacy-Wurst by Facebook

Mar 10, 2016

Latest German Sausage? Privacy-Wurst by Facebook

Despite not being explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, the Supreme Court has firmly held that a right to privacy for all Americans is found in several amendments to the Constitution, with almost 100 years of case law providing precedent for many personal privacy rights that have become a cornerstone of American culture. However, in this…

State Attorneys General Tell Congress: “Back-Off Our Data Breach Authority”

Jul 9, 2015

State Attorneys General Tell Congress: “Back-Off Our Data Breach Authority”

  Every week, we learn about new data breaches affecting consumers across the country. Federal government workers and retirees recently received the unsettling news that a breach compromised their personal information, including social security numbers, job history, pay, race, and benefits. Amid a host of other public relations issues, the Trump organization recently discovered a potential…

Another Class Action Pops Up For Complaints About Pop-Ups

Mar 3, 2015

Another Class Action Pops Up For Complaints About Pop-Ups

  A class action lawsuit recently instituted in federal court in the Northern District of California, Hunter v. Lenovo et al., alleges that Lenovo Inc., a computer manufacturer, violated its customers’ rights by selling computers which came preinstalled with alleged spyware manufactured by Superfish Inc., another named defendant.  The purported class alleges that the Superfish…

International Data Privacy Day: Our Top 10 Data Privacy Tips

Jan 28, 2015

International Data Privacy Day: Our Top 10 Data Privacy Tips

It’s International Data Privacy Day!  Every year on January 28, the United States, Canada and 27 countries of the European Union celebrate Data Privacy Day.  This day is designed to raise awareness of and generate discussion about data privacy rights and practices.  Indeed, each day new reports surface about serious data breaches, data practice concerns,…

ICANN’s New Program Adds Hundreds of Domains, More to Come

Apr 30, 2014

ICANN’s New Program Adds Hundreds of Domains, More to Come

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) continues to make significant progress with its implementation of the New generic Top–Level Domain (gTLD) Program. Under the new program, ICANN has added more than 250 new gTLDs to the Domain Name System (DNS) and could add hundreds more in the next several years. ICANN is…

“Heartbleed” Bug – Antibiotics Won’t Help, Changing Passwords Might

Apr 14, 2014

“Heartbleed” Bug – Antibiotics Won’t Help, Changing Passwords Might

After recovering from high-profile data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus, signing up for free credit monitoring and analyzing our credit reports, a new Internet villain recently emerged:  the “Heartbleed Bug.”  The Heartbleed Bug is a security flaw present on Open SSL, popular software run on most webservers.  This open source software is widely used…

Attorney General Holder Calls on Congress to Establish Strong National Data Breach Notification Standard

Feb 25, 2014

Attorney General Holder Calls on Congress to Establish Strong National Data Breach Notification Standard

By Michelle Cohen, CIPP-US Yesterday, in his weekly video address, Attorney General Eric Holder urged Congress to create a national data breach notification standard requiring companies to quickly notify consumers of a breach of their personal or financial information.  In the wake of the high profile holiday season data breaches at retailers Target and Neiman Marcus,…

Data Privacy Day

Jan 28, 2014

Data Privacy Day

By Michelle Cohen, CIPP-US On January 28th, in an effort raise awareness of privacy and data privacy, the United States, Canada and 27 countries of the European Union celebrate International Data Privacy Day.  Many organizations use Data Privacy Day as an opportunity to educate their employees and stakeholders about privacy-related topics.  With the recent, high-profile data…

Botnet ZeroAccess Hit With Complaint by Microsoft, but Will This Slow the Malware Industry Down?

Dec 19, 2013

Botnet ZeroAccess Hit With Complaint by Microsoft, but Will This Slow the Malware Industry Down?

ZeroAccess is one of the world’s largest botnets – a network of computers infected with malware to trigger online fraud.  Recently, after having eluded investigators for months, ZeroAccess was disrupted by Microsoft and law enforcement agencies. Earlier this month, armed with a court order and law enforcement help overseas, Microsoft took steps to cut off…