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"Professors from the University of California - Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania have released the results of a joint study which indicates that young people and old are concerned about private information getting into the wrong hands. They found that approximately two-thirds of all consumers polled said they did not want tailored content if that meant they would be tracked via the Internet. Other interesting findings include: * 66% of respondents reported that tailored/targeted ads 'did not appeal' * 55% of 18-24 year olds reported not wanting tailored ads and 37% reported not waiting tailored discounts * 54% of 18 - 24 year olds report not wanting tailored news * For those over age 65, 82% report not wanting tailored ads and 68% report not wanting tailored news"

There is an old axiom in marketing circles that it costs more money to acquire new customers than to retain and service your old ones. In this precarious financial environment, the focus for many companies is now on keeping the existing customers satisfied, rather than worrying only about adding new ones to the fold. Since the business environment has slowed for now, showing your clients additional "value added" services rather than simply a lower price, for example, will be critical. Companies should be taking an introspective look for differentiating factors in the areas of security and privacy "value," and how they can leverage what they uncover - a competitive advantage. How can an organization best position their privacy and security programs to be used as a competitive advantage? First, of course, you need to ensure that your privacy and security program is robust, well-tested, formally documented and meets or exceeds whatever legislation that your company is subject to or regulated against. It is also important to give your customers a point of reference about the validity of your programs so they easily translate the value into a currency they recognize. Further, you should take advantage of any other internal and external audits, assessments and oversights that you can reasonably share with external parties by crafting the results of these documents as a consumable for external parties. It has been my experience that clients, especially their security teams, really appreciate this effort. Another innovative way to deliver a competitive advantage today is in the realm of vendor management. This discipline is quickly becoming an increasingly high-profile topic of discussion and interest between clients, customers and their service providers. The onus is on you anyway to demonstrate oversight of your third-party service provider(s). This is where you should also have the "value add" conversation and validate why your clients placed their trus

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"Bankers are playing with fire by increasing risk when taxpayer tolerance with financial bailouts has worn perilously thin, the International Monetary Fund warned. Managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn reckons bankers may be in the throes of a "Mardi Gras" party of renewed speculation ahead of a looming regulatory crackdown. Yet the return of their old habits is dangerous. If a new financial crisis occurred in a few years" time, the public would be unwilling to support another round of massive bailouts, he told the Confederation of British Industry. Democracy itself could be threatened if banks went back to taxpayers with their caps in their hands. "In an atmosphere of increasing optimism, we see signs of old habits coming back. Risk-taking is on the rise," said Strauss-Kahn. "Right now, regulatory uncertainty is throwing up some perverse incentives. For example, it might be encouraging a risk-taking culture -- a Mardi Gras effect whereby financial institutions party now in expectation of lean times to come. "Clearly, this is dangerous, not least for emerging markets. And we may run out of time -- if we wait too long to implement these reforms, it might be too late." A second wave of rescues may simply not get through national legislatures, he added: "The political reaction would be very strong, putting some democracies at risk." IMF figures show the aftershocks of the 2008 crisis are far from over, with firms recognising only half of their losses worldwide. Yet despite the fragility of the financial sector, there is mounting evidence that traders are making hay before tougher regulatory standards come into force. Investment banking profits have soared this year, as firms make the most of ultra-low interest rates, money-printing operations and huge government bond issuance programmes. Strauss-Kahn argued countries need to act quickly to remove "regulatory uncertainty" -- ensuring bankers do not make the most of the current confusion over future standards

Identity thieves using the names and Social Security numbers of Irving Independent School District employees have made thousands of dollars in purchases, school officials say. One woman has been accused of fraudulent use or possession of identifying information and two charges of credit card abuse. A second person linked to the theft case has been arrested but no charges have yet been filed in the Irving case, authorities said. At least 64 of the 3,400 teachers and other employees whose names were on the old benefits report that somehow ended up in the trash have said they are identity theft victims. The school district mailed letters to current and former employees about the breach, but 472 of the letters were returned as undeliverable. Pat Lamb, district security director, said in a story for Sunday's online edition of The Dallas Morning News that the employees at risk of being on the list worked for the district in the 2000-01 school year and had payroll deductions for benefits. "We still do not know how our records were compromised," Lamb said. "We don't know if somebody was supposed to shred that information, but it ended up in a Dumpster." Lamb said his name was among those on the report, which was generated in 2000. Cynthia Will, a former teacher, pleaded for help from the school board last week. More than $25,000 was charged in her name, including a $4,000 diamond ring, the newspaper reported. "It was stunning the damage that was done in just seven days," she told the board. Will has to carry an affidavit stating that she is an identity theft victim and if there are warrants on her old driver's license number that they are not for her. Dawn Bizzell, who has taught in the district since 1996, said district officials acted too slowly. An employee advisory wasn't posted until Jan. 26. Bizzell said she learned she was an identity theft victim on Nov. 28 and police told her of the district connection on Dec. 3.

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With Twitter firmly established as the "conversation place to be," marketers are beginning to look for where they fit in. And that means tools. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a service that lets individuals exchange 140-character messages-via computer or mobile device-with groups of "followers." The result is a fast-and-loose, multidimensional conversation that falls somewhere in between blogging and text messaging, happening in real time between millions of users around the world. Luckily, the Web interface for Twitter.com is just the start of many ways to interact with and glean intelligence from Twitter conversations. There is big potential value for tapping into the Twitter-stream for insights into what customers are saying about your company's brand and its market. "Millions are leaning on Twitter pretty hard as a way to network and communicate with contacts new and old," said John Jatsch, a social marketing expert and operator of Duct Tape Marketing. He added that marketers have many options for how to use Twitter, including connecting with customers, monitoring conversations and testing new ideas. To use Twitter to its fullest, b-to-b marketers should consider using the following handful of tools and services: ??Twitter clients. It doesn't take long for most Twitter users to move beyond using Twitter.com to post and monitor their posts or "tweets." There are much more powerful tools at your disposal for reading, filtering, searching and posting to Twitter.com. The list of Twitter clients includes popular Mac client Twitterific; Adobe Air-based clients such as Twhirl, Tweetr and Spaz; Firefox add-ons like Twitterfox and TwitBin; and software that lets you track multiple social engines-such as Facebook, FriendFeed and even instant messaging as well as Twitter-like Digsby and AlertThingy. A new client receiving a lot of buzz is TweetDeck, which features a huge but customizable user interface that makes it easier to track posts, re

Perhaps Mark Z is surprised that people actually read terms of service. Arrogant twit. He's a multi-millionaire who cares about the little people (stage direction: Mark Z looks sincerely into web cam as he wipes away tear with hundred dollar bill). Perhaps the Tweens don't understand what social networking sites really sell; looks like some grown ups started asking where all their personal information is going and when it might inconveniently show up in some ad campaign.

A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input. Going forward, we've decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long. More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren't just a document that protect our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service. Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we'll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms. You have my commitment that we'll do all of these things, but in order to do them right it will take a little bit of time. We expect to complete this in the next few we

An Orange County woman accused of using a false identity to obtain breast implants from a plastic surgeon is now facing three felony charges, including commercial burglary, grand theft and identity theft. Yvonne Jean Pampellonne, 30, nicknamed the 'Breast Implant Bandit', appeared in a Westminster court Wednesday. She did not enter a plea and asked that her arraignment be continued so she could hire a new attorney. Pampellone surrendered to police in March after detectives caught up with her using breast implant tracking numbers. Police say that in September of 2008 Pampellonne used the personal information of another woman to establish a line of credit at the Pacific Center for Plastic Surgery in Huntington Beach. Doctors performed $12,000 in liposuction and breast augmentation surgery at the center, police say, charging $12,000 to the phony line of credit and exchanging her existing implants for new ones. Medical staff at the center became suspicious after Pampellonne never returned for follow-up appointments. Because Pampellone had old breast implants replaced, they were able to track her down using the serial numbers that appear on every set of implants. Pampellone faces 3 years, 8 months in prison if convicted. She remains free on $20,000 bail and is due back in court on June 29th.

(March 31, 2009) First Data Corp. announced on Tuesday it will use technology from Inside Contactless, a French chipmaker, for its Go-Tag product, a sticker that can be affixed to mobile phones to make them work like contactless-payment devices. Under the three-year agreement, Inside Contactless will supply so-called prelams, or chip-and-antenna elements, that card manufacturers can use to manufacture the stickers for First Data. Up to now, Go-Tags have been proprietary devices for use in so-called closed-loop networks involving individual merchants, but with Inside Contactless's technology the product will likely be usable by mid-year on the payWave and PayPass contactless platforms operated by Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., pending certification on those systems, according to industry sources. A First Data spokesperson will not comment beyond Tuesday's announcement concerning the company's arrangement with Inside Contactless to provide prelams for Go-Tags. In addition, CPI Card Group, a card manufacturer based in Littleton, Colo., last fall said it expected to ship millions of contactless stickers based on prelams from Inside Contactless (Digital Transactions News, Oct. 15, 2008). CPI's customers are financial institutions interested in using the stickers to permit contactless transactions on payWave and PayPass. CPI is a manufacturer of Go-Tags, but will not comment on any plans for that product. First Data's deal with Inside Contactless follows by one day an announcement by Blaze Mobile Inc., an Alameda, Calif.-based provider of applications for mobile devices, that it is introducing a similar sticker that will work on the PayPass platform. The product works with the Blaze Mobile Wallet, a service the 4-year-old company launched a year ago when it was known as Mobile Candy Dish Inc. (Digital Transactions News, April 10, 2008). The stickers link to prepaid accounts managed by MetaBank, a Storm Lake, Iowa-based unit of Meta Financial Group Inc. Devel

Every day for one hour, Olympic-level athletes all over the world have an appointment they cannot break. The swimmer Dara Torres, a 12-time Olympic medalist, squeezes her hour into training, running errands and caring for her 3-year-old daughter. The curler Nicole Joraanstad schedules her hour at dawn, but says it often interrupts her sleep. The Olympic decathlon champion Bryan Clay makes himself available at night, when he is most likely to be home with family. Since Jan. 1, Olympic-level athletes have had to schedule their daily availability - hour and place - three months in advance so drug testers can find them, according to new World Anti-Doping Agency rules. And violating those rules can have serious repercussions. Three missed drug tests within an 18-month period during an athlete's appointed hour count as a positive drug test and can result in a one- to two-year ban from competition. Because the element of surprise is crucial to effective testing, athletes are also subject to random out-of-competition tests at any time. And they are tested at competitions. Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee said, "Sports today has a price to pay for suspicion." But some athletes say the rules have gone too far. "It's absolutely too much," Torres said in a telephone interview. "Why make this more cumbersome when we do so much already? We're at the point where we have to find a middle ground." Never before has there been so much protest regarding out-of-competition testing. Athletes in nearly every sport as well as organizations like FIFA, soccer's international governing body, have publicly criticized the doping agency's regulations. At least one lawsuit challenging the rules is in court. Sixty-five Belgian athletes, including the world-class Quick Step cycling team and its star Tom Boonen, filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that the new rules violate European privacy laws.

Following complaints from Republicans, the White House has shut down a two-week-old e-mail tip line launched to take reports from citizens of "disinformation about health insurance reform." "An ironic development is that the launch of an online program meant to provide facts about health insurance reform has itself become the target of fear-mongering and online rumors that are the tactics of choice for the defenders of the status quo," wrote White House new media director Macon Phillips in announcing the change. "The White House takes online privacy very seriously," he added. The e-mail tip line, flag@whitehouse.gov, was launched Aug. 4 as part of the White House's Health Insurance Reform Reality Check effort, a campaign-style rapid-response effort reminiscent of the war room Obama for America launched in the summer of 2008 to fight online rumors about the then-senator's patriotism and religion. But coming from the head of state, rather than a political candidate, the new effort quickly sparked concern among Republicans about the propriety of government collecting information on private citizens' political speech.

"Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made some big announcements Wednesday from the company's headquarters in Palo Alto about changes to how users control and organize their information on the service. Zuckerberg has been criticized in the past for not caring about privacy, making statements that worry some. He once told TechCrunch that privacy was no longer the social norm. But the 26-year-old CEO has just done an about face. He told a room full of journalists, "It is a core part of our belief that people own and have control of all the information they upload.""

Can Zuckerberg be trusted not to reverse course - again. His immaturity as a leader and abuse of user trust makes one question everything that comes out of the man's mouth.

"Fomer UCLA Healthcare System researcher Huping Zhou has pleaded guilty to violating parts of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and could be one of the first people in the country convicted under the law, federal authorities announced Friday. After learning he was to be let go, the 48-year-old is alleged to have accessed the UCLA patient records system 323 times during the three-week period, mostly to check out the files of celebrities, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The names of the targeted stars have not been revealed. Federal authorities say Zhou admitted to accessing the records -- cruising files that were not necessary to view as part of his job -- under a plea agreement. He'll face a judge for sentencing March 22. It's not clear what kind of punishment the U.S. Attorney's Office will recommend in exchange for his cooperation."

"Despite concerns from some privacy groups and U.S. lawmakers about behavioral advertising, most large advertising networks generally comply with a set of privacy and data-handling standards adopted by the Network Advertising Initiative a year ago, the NAI said in a report released Wednesday." ...NAI, whose members include Google, Yahoo and Advertising.com, should be praised for doing a compliance report after skipping it for several years, said Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief operating officer CDT. However, the group should consider using a third party to audit compliance of its privacy guidelines, instead of having NAI staff do the audits, he said. In addition, while NAI members appear to be following most of the guidelines, some of the privacy safeguards are "weak," including the data retention standard, he said. "There's no maximum for data retention -- they just have to state what their data retention policy is," Schwartz added. The NAI report doesn't lessen the need for new privacy laws, Schwartz said. Several online advertising networks are not members of NAI, and the recent public pressure has led to the NAI updating 8-year-old guidelines last year and issuing a compliance report for the first time in several years, although the group had promised regular reports, he said. "It seems that when there's regulatory pressure, they actually do comply with what they said they were going to do," he said. "We certainly wouldn't want to see any regulatory pressure lifted."

Worth a read. The story changes quite a bit from the top to bottom of the story.

This is a great time to be in the hard-drive shredding business, as companies scramble to destroy data before the bad guys have a chance to steal it. A look inside the belly of the beast (includes video). September 08, 2008 - CSO - Thanks to all the fear over data security breaches, a computer recycling operation has morphed into something much bigger - and potentially more lucrative - for the Saraiva brothers. That's not to say the nature of their work has changed much. They still make money off of companies looking to unload devices that have outlived their usefulness. They still stuff the gadgetry into a shredder on the back of a truck that reduces it to shrapnel. The difference is they're now part of the fight against data thieves. Their company, Peabody, Mass.-based Corporate Destruction Solutions, is rapidly expanding to accommodate organizations desperate to destroy old hard drives before they can fall into the hands of data thieves. And they're not alone. Several companies in the metal-shredding business confirm a surge in demand for their services in the wake of many highly-publicized data breaches.

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Social networking phenomenon Facebook has beaten out arch-rival and former market leader MySpace by most measures of popularity, except the one that pays the bills. While Facebook has outpaced MySpace in bringing in members - it has 175 million active users at the latest count, compared with around 130 million for MySpace - it has struggled make money from them. While MySpace is closing in on $1 billion in revenues, Facebook generated less than $300 million in sales last year, reports say. Indeed, Facebook's efforts to drum up revenue have led to it repeatedly becoming the target of some of the biggest online privacy protests on the Web. Its most recent fight earlier this month followed Facebook's attempt to redefine its own rules and assert ownership over anything its members posted on the site. The company has since backed off and is rethinking its policies. Why hasn't Facebook benefited from the vaunted "network effect" that makes such services more valuable the more its adds members and connections between them? After all, Facebook is spreading quickly in nearly 100 languages, while MySpace has focused on the United States and five other markets where Web advertising flourishes. The answer may lie in the origins of the five-year-old site started by then Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg. Its appeal at the outset was that it was a place where users could share tidbits of their personal lives with selected friends and acquaintances. This blurred the distinction between a private space and a public one. MySpace is more explicitly a public place where friends hang out in the equivalent of a cafe or a club and the aim is often to meet new people. Most of all, MySpace is a place to share music with other fans.

LOS ANGELES-Fifteen hospital workers have been fired and another eight disciplined for looking at medical records of octuplet mother Nadya Suleman without permission, hospital officials said Monday. Kaiser Permanente reported the violations of health care privacy laws to the state and has warned employees at its Bellflower facility to keep away from Suleman's records unless they have a medical purpose, said hospital spokesman Jim Anderson. "Despite the notoriety of this case, to us this person is a patient who deserves the privacy that all our patients get," Anderson told The Associated Press. Anderson would not elaborate on how the other eight employees were reprimanded, saying only that the punishments were significant. A similar privacy breach at UCLA hospitals led to celebrities' medical information getting leaked to tabloids in recent years, including details of Farrah Fawcett's cancer treatment showing up in the National Enquirer. Anderson said Kaiser does not believe any of Suleman's information was shared with the media, based on the results of their inquiry. The 33-year-old single mother of 14 gave birth to her octuplets on Jan. 26 at Kaiser's hospital in Bellflower, about 17 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Her attorney Jeff Czech said Suleman does not plan to file a lawsuit, though he suspects Kaiser employees were looking for medical information on Suleman's sperm donor. He said the name is not listed on the Advertisement medical records. "She trusts Kaiser and they said they'd look into it," Czech said. "We feel that they're on top of it and are taking care of it." Anderson could not provide details about when Suleman's medical records were accessed and by what kind of hospital employee. He said Kaiser had warned its employees about patient confidentiality rules before Suleman checked into the hospital in December. "Even though no one knew she was there, they knew she was going to have a lot of babies," Anderson said. "The extra monitoring he

GovLoop (http://govloop.com), an online community created for and by government employees, announced today it has signed up its 10,000th member less than a year after launching. Dubbed by some as a "Facebook for Feds," GovLoop brings together government employees from the U.S. and other nations to discuss ideas, share best practices and create a community dedicated to the betterment of government. A revolution is happening in government as the result of a new generation of government employees, the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, and the Obama administration's focus on transparency, participation, and collaboration. This revolution is often called "Government 2.0" and GovLoop is at the center of this movement. The social network was developed by Steve Ressler, a 28-year old federal employee from Tampa, Fla. who is also a co-founder of Young Government Leaders (http://youngovernmentleaders.org). Fed up with the silos that existed across government agencies, including artificial barriers between levels of government, rank and age, Ressler believed there had to be a better way to share information, so he launched GovLoop.com in June 2008.

For months somebody (I don't know who) has been running a Facebook profile that bears my name, my personal information and several photos of me. An old high school friend had connected with the faker, instead of me. Several of the people with whom fake Matt is friends also appeared to be fakes, including a copycat of Vertex Pharmaceuticals ( VRTX - news - people ) founder and chief executive Joshua Boger. (Boger has a real Facebook profile but isn't friends with me. He declined to comment on the fakesters.) I couldn't see this Fake Matt's profile myself, even by searching for my name.

A law designed to keep college students' grades private often is used for a much different purpose -- to shield universities from potentially embarrassing situations. Some critics say a number of schools are deliberately misreading the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act in order to keep scandals and other unflattering news from hitting the media. "Some schools have good-faith misunderstandings of the law, but there are others that simply see this as a handy excuse to hide behind," says Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, which provides student journalists with legal help. Legal experts say part of the problem is that the law is loosely defined. In addition, the potential consequences of violating the law -- namely, that schools would lose their federal funding -- prompt university officials to be conservative in their decisions about releasing information. Those complaints rankle advocates of student privacy, who say that, if anything, the three-decade-old law should be expanded. "Most of these kids are adults, and they should be able to make their own decisions," says Daren Bakst, president of the Council on Law in Higher Education. Congress already reworked the law to clarify when universities can disclose student information, especially involving health and safety matters. Those changes, adopted in January, followed the 2007 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech by a mentally troubled student.

"Kathy Silver, CEO of University Medical Center, learned three weeks ago that names, birth dates and Social Security numbers for at least 21 patients were leaked from the hospital - a crime being investigated by the FBI. But the hospital still has not disclosed the breach to the patients, Silver told a committee of legislators Wednesday. She spoke as if this was not a problem. The law allows 60 days from the time UMC learns of a security breach to inform patients, she said. One victim says that is too long to wait to tell patients they may be at risk of identity theft. The hospital should have disclosed the breach immediately, said a 40-year-old UMC patient whose personal information - the kind that can be used for identity theft - was leaked. The man, who went to the public hospital Nov. 1 after a motorcycle accident, learned his privacy had been breached only when a Las Vegas Sun reporter told him Wednesday afternoon. The man was stunned and angry to learn from someone other than hospital officials that his data had been leaked. Hospital officials should have notified him "way sooner," he said. "I would've given them two or three days after they initially found out. But this is a major thing - a priority thing!""