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Affixing a dollar cost to a problem has immense benefit, and The Ponemon Institute goes to great lengths to arrive at the figures for its Annual Cost of a Data Breach Study. We painstakingly analyzed the financial impact a data breach has on a company by examining 43 different companies from a cross section of industries, all of which experienced a significant data breach affecting a range of data records representative of the norm. And knowing that a data breach may cost your company $6.65 million dollars may be all the information that is needed for a company to assign an appropriate budget to those tasked with information security. In 2008 the average total cost of a data breach was $6.65 million, up from $6.35 million last year and $4.54 in 2005. In 2008, the per-victim cost of a data breach was $202, up from $197 in 2007, and from $138 when the study was launched in 2005. Breaches involving a third party to which data had been outsourced bore a per-victim cost of $231, whereas self contained breaches bore a per-victim cost of $179. Breaches that were the result of a malicious act bore a per-victim cost of $225, whereas breaches that were the result of negligence bore a per-victim cost of $199. Breaches that were the result of a lost of stolen laptop computer bore a per-victim cost of $249, whereas breaches that did not involve a lost or stolen laptop computer bore a per-victim cost of $177. If the data breach was a first-time event for the company the per victim cost was $243, but if the company had experienced a breach previously the per victim cost was $192. The simple conclusion to these numbers is clear: the financial impact for a company that experiences a data breach is significant and rising. That finding alone may be alarming, but it seems to merely quantify what most people already knew to be true. The "wow" factor comes when you realize that we haven't simply identified the cost of an inevitable outcome, as if to tell the world, "buckle up and brac

At first glance, Chicago's latest crime-fighting strategy seems to be plucked from a Hollywood screenplay. Someone sees a thief dipping into a Salvation Army kettle in a crowd of shoppers on State Street and dials 911 from a cellphone. Within seconds, a video image of the caller's location is beamed onto a dispatcher's computer screen. An officer arrives and by police radio is directed to the suspect, whose description and precise location are conveyed by the dispatcher watching the video, leading to a quick arrest. That chain of events actually happened in the Loop in December, said Ray Orozco, the executive director of the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications. "We can now immediately take a look at the crime scene if the 911 caller is in a location within 150 feet of one of our surveillance cameras, even before the first responders arrive," Mr. Orozco said. The technology, a computer-aided dispatch system, was paid for with a $6 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security. It has been in use since a trial run in December. "One of the best tools any big city can have is visual indicators like cameras, which can help save lives," Mr. Orozco said. In addition to the city's camera network, Mr. Orozco said, the new system can also connect to cameras at private sites like tourist attractions, office buildings and university campuses. Twenty private companies have agreed to take part in the program, a spokeswoman for Mr. Orozco said, and 17 more are expected to be added soon. Citing security concerns, the city would not say how many cameras were in the system. Mayor Richard M. Daley said this week that the integrated camera network would enhance regional security as well as fight street crime. Still, opponents of Mr. Daley's use of public surveillance cameras described the new system as a potential Big Brother intrusion on privacy rights. "If a 911 caller reports that someone left a backpack on the sidewalk, wil

If you've been advertising online for a long time, you may have gone through stages: sticking with banner ads at first, and then going with search engine advertising, and maybe putting your ads on a publisher network belonging to a search engine or an advertising company. Most of the time you probably tried to put your ad in a matching context. That might be the wrong approach. I've written before about behavioral advertising, also known as behavioral targeting. You can read my first article about it here. If the topic of behavioral targeting intrigues you, you might also want to read about behavioral retargeting. Before I plunge into the content and focus of this article, though, let me give you a quick definition. Behavioral advertising is a form of online advertising that follows the user around. For example, a web surfer who has just priced some flights on an airline's website might be shown a travel-related ad when he surfs to the next website in which he's interested, which might be for the local pizza joint. The theory behind behavioral advertising is, in a sense, pretty simple. Most people are bombarded with ads most of the time, especially when web surfing. As a result, we tune them out. Because of the usual advertising practices, we might be better at tuning out ads that are in the same context as the content we're reading. In other words, someone reading content on a web site about where the best ski slopes are just might have completely ignored an ad for your lovely Aspen getaway. To rise above this clamor, it's necessary to hit web surfers with a surprise, something that doesn't fit the normal context. Think about it: aren't you more likely to stare at someone talking into a banana than a cell phone? That's the theory, but it's new enough that researchers and marketers are still doing surveys to prove or disprove it. The most recent one was conducted by BL Labs and released by ad network BlueLithium. You'd probably expect it to

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The FBI has used a secret form of spyware in a series of investigations designed to nab extortionists, database-deleting hackers, child molesters, and hitmen, according to documents obtained by CNET News. One suspect used Microsoft's Hotmail to send bomb and anthrax threats to an undercover government investigator; another demanded a payment of $10,000 a month to stop cutting cables; a third was an alleged European hitman who was soliciting for business from a Hushmail.com account. CNET News obtained the documents -- totaling hundreds of pages, although nearly all of them were heavily redacted -- this week through a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI. The FBI spyware, called CIPAV, came to light in July 2007 through court documents that showed how the bureau used it to nab a teenager who was e-mailing bomb threats to a high school near Olympia, Wash. (CIPAV stands for Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier.) A June 2007 memo says that the FBI's Deployment Operations Personnel were instructed to "deploy a CIPAV to geophysically locate the subject issuing bomb threats to the Timberline High School, Lacy, Washington. The CIPAV will be deployed via a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address posted to the subject's private chat room on MySpace.com."

Rarely is the response to a new government initiative a unanimous round of "thumbs up," but so far that seems to be the case regarding yesterday's (April 9) announcement that The Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs will collaborate on building an electronic database of administrative and medical information for U.S. servicemen and women. Since developing a broad electronic health records (EHRs) initiative is a prominent feature of the Obama Administration's economic stimulus plan, it makes sense to start (or at least focus) on a defined segment of the population -- current and past military personnel. But, apart from the specific technology, architecture and technical administration aspects of this program, there will be other challenges in pursuing the goal of EHRs for the military -- challenges that insurance technology executives know only too well. These include collaboration among different and sometimes competing interests (in this case, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which historically have not worked together as closely as one might imagine); and concerns about privacy and security. In fact, the ways in which the military EHRs initiative addresses the privacy issue could provide some interesting best practices (or actions to avoid) for private-sector players. "Currently, there is no comprehensive system in place that allows for a streamlined transition of health records between DOD and the VA," President Barack Obama said at yesterday's announcement, "and that results in extraordinary hardship for an awful lot of veterans who end up finding their records lost, unable to get their benefits processed in a timely fashion. And that's why I'm asking both departments to work together to define and build a seamless system of integration with a simple goal: When a member of the Armed Forces separates from the military, he or she will no longer have to walk paperwork from a DOD

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By now, many employees are uncomfortably aware that their every keystroke at work, from email on office computers to text messages on company phones, can be monitored legally by their employers. What employees typically don't expect is for the company to spy on them while on password-protected sites using nonwork computers. But even that privacy could be in jeopardy. A case brewing in federal court in New Jersey pits bosses against two employees who were complaining about their workplace on an invite-only discussion group on MySpace.com, a social-networking site owned by News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The case tests whether a supervisor who managed to log into the forum -- and then fired employees who badmouthed supervisors and customers there -- had the right to do so. The case has some legal and privacy experts concerned that companies are intruding into areas that their employees had considered off limits. "The question is whether employees have a right to privacy in their non-work-created communications with each other. And I would think the answer is that they do," said Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment expert and partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York. The legal landscape is murky. For the most part, employers don't need a reason to fire nonunion workers. But state laws in California, New York and Connecticut protect employees who engage in lawful, off-duty activities from being fired or disciplined, according to a report prepared by attorneys at the firm Proskauer Rose LLP. While private conversations might be covered under those laws, none of the statutes specifically addresses social networking or blogging. Thus, privacy advocates expect to see more of these legal challenges. In February, three police officers in Harrison, N.Y., were suspended after they allegedly made lewd remarks about the town mayor on a Facebook account. The officers mistakenly thought the remarks were protected with a password, but city officials view

Cloud services are now vulnerable to malicious use, a security company has suggested, after a techie worked out how Amazon's EC2 service could be used as a BitTorrent file harvester and host. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a web service software developers can use to access computing, compilation and software trialling power on a dynamic basis, without having to install the resources locally. Now a developer, Brett O'Connor, has come up with a step-by-step method for using the same service to host an open source BitTorrent application called TorrentFlux. Getting this up and running on Amazon would require some technical know-how, but would be within the reach of a moderately experienced user, right down to following O'Connor's command line low-down on how to install the public TorrentFlux app straight to Amazon's EC2 rather than a user's local machine. Finding an alternative way of using BitTorrent matters to hardcore file sharers because ISPs and admins alike are increasingly keen to block such bandwidth-eating traffic on home and business links, and O'Connor's EC2 guide was clearly written to that end - using the Amazon service would make such blocking unlikely. "I created a web-based, open-source Bittorrent 'machine' that liberated my network and leveraged Amazon's instead," says O'Connor. He then quips "I can access it from anywhere, uploading Torrent files from wherever, and manage them from my iPhone." However, security company GSS claims the guide shows the scope for possible abuse, using EC2 to host or 'seed' non-legitimate BitTorrent file distribution. "This means, says Hobson, that hackers and other interested parties can simply use a prepaid (and anonymous) debit card to pay the $75 a month fee to Amazon and harvest BitTorrent applications at high speed with little or no chance of detection," said David Hobson of GSS. "The danger here is that companies may find their staff FTPing files from Amazon EC2 - a completely legitimate domain -

Enterprise employees frequently use social networking tools, most notably Web-based applications. It's no surprise more organizations are wondering what happens if social networking data becomes relevant to an e-discovery investigation. How does an enterprise go about discovering and assessing Web 2.0 data? How responsible is an organization, legally speaking, for the information that's out there in the Web 2.0 world? What risks arise from e-discovery as it relates to Web 2.0 data, and how can you mitigate them? In this tip, we will look at e-discovery as it relates to Web 2.0 and consider the strongest options for minimizing risks to the organization. E-discovery basics We begin with a quick look at what e-discovery is and how it can create risk. Essentially, e-discovery is the electronic extension of the legal process of discovery, which Wikipedia defines as "the pre-trial phase in a lawsuit in which each party through the law of civil procedure can request documents and other evidence from other parties or can compel the production of evidence by using a subpoena or through other discovery devices, such as requests for production and depositions." If you're an IT person, not a lawyer, it's important to note that the rules governing the discovery process now require plaintiffs to address all electronically stored information or ESI. In other words, if your organization faces litigation, it will have to deal with the issue of e-discovery, which will entail a whole lot more than turning over some old emails. Depending upon your role in the organization, the first you may hear of this is a "notice of litigation" with perhaps a "litigation hold directive" containing a "preservation directive." Here is a generic e-discovery request below. Apart from a few limiting factors, such as subject matter, named persons and a specified time period, the scope of such a notice is likely to be broad; blame standard procedure, not some high-powered attorney pushing his or her lu

It's unclear whether a report being prepared for President Barack Obama on federal information security preparedness will support recent calls for the creation of a new cybersecurity office within the White House, two lawmakers said last week. Instead, the report may recommend a more collaborative and cooperative strategy among federal agencies on the issue of cybersecurity without a single agency or department in charge, they said. Members of the U.S. House Cybersecurity Caucus met with Melissa Hathaway, acting senior director for cyberspace for the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council. Hathaway, who is conducting a 60-day review of federal cybersecurity preparedness on behalf of the president, Thursday presented a status report to members of the caucus. Speaking with reporters after the briefing, Rep. James Langevin (D-R.I.), co-chair of the caucus, and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of a subcommittee within the Committee on Homeland Security, said it was unclear yet what Hathaway might recommend. Rather than "include another structure" within the White House, there may be a call for an increase in staffing within the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in a bid to improve its current role of overseeing government cyberaffairs, said Langevin. Chances are "there will not be one king," he said. Langevin co-chaired a commission at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan think tank, that has called for the creation of a centralized cybersecurity office in the White House to be named the National Office for Cyberspace. The new office could combine the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) and the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force, two existing agencies that are handing cybersecurity today. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has also called for a new office dedicated to cybersecurity within the White House. Calls have been prompted by what is perceived as the inability of the U.S. De

On Wednesday, February 11, 2009, the Data Protection Working Party, an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy, released its Working Document 1-2009 (.pdf) on pre-trial discovery for cross border civil litigation. The Working Document attempts to reconcile the tension between U.S. discovery rules and the European Union's Directive 95/46/EC (.pdf), which outlines the EU's privacy requirements. What follows is a summary of the Working Document and an analysis of how it begins to bridge the gap between U.S. discovery rules and the European privacy framework. The Working Document offers guidance to EU data controllers responding to U.S. discovery requests. As the Working Document explains, those controllers often find themselves in a bind. On the one hand, U.S. law allows for broad discovery, which may require a controller to provide, or "process," personal data of customers or employees. On the other hand, Article 7 of EU Directive 95/46 limits a member state's authority to process such data. Under Article 7, a member state may process personal data only if one of six identified grounds for processing applies. The Working Document considers the Article 7 grounds most likely to supply a legitimate basis for compliance with a discovery request - namely 1) consent, 2) necessary for compliance with a legal obligation, and 3) necessary for the purposes of a legitimate interest, where such interests are not "overridden by the interests for fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject." Recognizing that the "interests of justice would be served by not unnecessarily limiting the ability of an organisation to act to promote or defend a legal right," the Working Document suggests that the third basis - necessary for the purposes of a legitimate interest - will often provide a ground for processing data in response to a U.S. discovery request.

A third (34 per cent) of discarded hard disk drives still contain confidential data, according to a new study which unearthed copies of hospital records and sensitive military information on eBayed kit. The study, sponsored by BT and Sims Lifecycle Services and run by the computer science labs at University of Glamorgan in Wales, Edith Cowan University in Australia and Longwood University in the US, also found network data and security logs from the German Embassy in Paris on one purchased drive. Researchers bought 300 drives from eBay, other auction sites, second-hand stalls and car boot sales. A disk bought on eBay contained details of test launch routines for the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) ground to air missile defence system. The same disk also held information belonging to the system's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, including blueprints of facilities and personal data on workers, including social security numbers. Lockheed Martin denies that the disk came from it. The arm manufacturer has launched an investigation that aims to uncover just how the sensitive data might have been wound up on the disk. Two discs bought in the UK apparently came from Lanarkshire NHS Trust, including patient medical records, images of X-rays and staff letters. Lanarkshire NHS Trust runs the Monklands and Hairmyres hospitals. In Australia, the exercise turned up a disk from a nursing home that contained pictures of actual patients and their wound photos, along with patient details. A hard disk from a US bank contained account numbers and details of plans for a $50bn currency exchange through Spain. Details of business transactions between the bank and organisations in Venezuela, Tunisia and Nigeria were also included. Correspondence between a member of the Federal Reserve Board and the unnamed banks revealed that one of the deals was already under scrutiny by the European Central Bank, and that federal investigators were also taking an interest. Yet anothe

Yesterday, CBC radio's morning show, the current, featured Lessons From The Identity Trail co-author, Ian Kerr, who discussed the book and a number of contemporary challenges that privacy faces in light of emerging technologies with guest host, Nancy Wilson. Below is the the text of Nancy Wilson's introduction and a link to the podcast of the full length interview in segment #3 of the show. To some people the Internet is the world's biggest commons ... a global public square. For others, it's a realm of shadowy, anonymous figures hiding behind online aliases. But anonymity is becoming less and less a feature of life online. We aired a clip with one perspective on that trend, posted last May on the website, Mobuzz.tv. Taking responsibility for your actions on line may be just one way you relinquish privacy. Every day, millions of Canadians hop on the Internet to check their e-mail, chat with their friends on social networking sites, book a vacation or buy a gift. And each time they click on a purchase or post a picture, they give up a little bit of their privacy. With this explosion of information technology - there are those who warn that our anonymity and our right to privacy is in jeopardy. That's the premise of a new book called On The Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society. Academics, governments and private corporations around the world contributed to the book, which examines how technology is changing the nature of our private lives, and what it means to be "anonymous."

With all the attention Google StreetView's clash with a baby deer evoked, it can be easy to overlook the tool's crime-fighting good side. Not too long ago, StreetView was instrumental in returning a kidnapped Massachusetts girl safely to her home, and just recently, it helped a Swiss police team detect a 1.2-acre marijuana field and nab the gang responsible. As with all things Google, you have to take the bad with the good. And the good can be pretty good, as reported in the Worcester Telegram. When 9-year-old Natalie Maltais was kidnapped by her grandmother and taken to a motel in rural Virginia, Athol police were able to track her down using her cellphone and Google StreetView. The cellphone's GPS data focused on a 300-foot area in Natural Bridge, Va. Using StreetView, the Worcester cops plugged in the coordinates of the area, navigated around a bit and saw a nearby motel that looked promising. When they sent Virginia police to the site, they found the grandmother along with the girl, and returned her safely to her legal guardians. A happy ending. Similarly, the AP yesterday reported that Swiss police used Google Earth to discover the pot field and make several arrests. While working the case, the police used Google Earth to zero in on a suspect's residence, only to stumble upon the field. Although it had been camouflaged by corn planted all along its perimeter, the weed field couldn't hide from Google's Earth's piercing satellite gaze. The find led to the arrest of 16 suspects who have allegedly sold up to 7 tons of hashish and marijuana, with an annual turnover of 3 million to 10 million francs (or $2.5 million to $8.64 million) per year. So yes, while Google can be insensitive at times, especially when it comes to images uploaded by StreetView, it's also a proven force for good in the world. In other words, a tool is only as good (or bad) as the person using it. Google doesn't kill Bambis, people do.

A consumer group accused Google of seeking provisions in the economic stimulus package that would allow it to sell patient medical data to Google Health advertisers. Perhaps patients' biggest worry about electronic medical records is that their private health data will get into the wrong hands. To get a feel for some folks' anxiety, just take a look at this from a group called Patient Privacy Rights: "CHILLING NEWS ABOUT HEALTH PRIVACY: You Have None." (Or look at one of our many posts about health data breaches.) So it's probably not a surprise that Google, which last year launched Google Health, a personal online repository, was quick to refute a charge by a different consumer group, called Consumer Watchdog, of "a rumored [Google] lobbying effort aimed at allowing the sale of electronic medical records." The group further claimed that Google is "reportedly" pushing for items in the economic stimulus bill that would allow the company to "sell patient medical information" to advertisers. Google shot back, posting an item in its public policy blog calling the claims "100 percent false and unfounded." The company added: Google does not sell health data. In fact, one of our most steadfast privacy principles is that we don't sell our users' personal data, whether it's stored in Google Health, Gmail, or in any of our products. And from a policy perspective, we oppose the sale of medical information in the health care industry. Google's ear is likely fine tuned to this issue, considering some folks in the medical community have already pointed out the company is not a type required to follow a federal patient-privacy law called HIPAA.

The following is an excerpt from the book The Truth About Identity Theft. In this section of Chapter 11: Social Engineering (.pdf), author Jim Stickley explains how easy it really is to hack a password. People often ask me how hard it is to hack a password. In reality, it is rare that I ever need to hack someone's password. Though there are numerous ways to gain passwords on a network and hundreds, if not thousands, of tools available to crack encrypted passwords, in the end I have found that it is far easier to simply ask for them. A perfect example of this type of attack was a medium-sized bank that I was testing recently. The bank's concern was related to the new virtual private network (VPN) capabilities it had rolled out to a number of its staff. The VPN allowed staff to connect directly to their secured network while at home or on the road. There is no doubt that a VPN can increase productivity, but there are some pretty major risks that can come with that convenience. The bank explained that the VPN was tied into its Active Directory server. For people who are not technical, basically this just means that when employees log in via the VPN, they use the same credentials they use to log on to their computer at the office. So I went back to my office, sat down, and picked up the phone. The first call I made was to find out the name of an employee in the IT department. I called the company's main line to the bank, pressed 0, and asked to speak with someone in the IT department. I was asked what I was calling about, so I told the employee I was receiving emails from that bank that seemed malicious. I could have used a number of excuses, but I have found that if you tie in an unhappy customer with a potential security issue, your call gets further up the food chain. In this case, I reached a man who I will call Bill Smith. I made up a story about the email, and after a few minutes, he was able to explain to me that I had called the wrong bank and it was actuall

We've all heard the argument before: "Why should you worry about the government looking into your personal records if you have nothing to hide?" Daniel J. Solove, an associate professor of law at The George Washington University Law School, analyzes that argument in a recently published paper titled "I've Got Nothing to Hide and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy." Solove argues that "the question assumes faulty assumptions about privacy and its value." Those who make the "nothing to hide" argument fail to understand the chilling effect that surveillance has on public discourse, the fact that small bits of private data (which an individual may not object to being uncovered) when put together form a larger and more intimate profile (which an individual may object to), and the mistake of having one's profile mistakenly associated with a group that is labeled as threatening. Here's an excerpt from the paper, which was published in the latest issue of the San Diego Law Review: [T]he problem with the "nothing to hide" argument is that it focuses on just one or two particular kinds of privacy problems - the disclosure of personal information or surveillance - and not others. It assumes a particular view about what privacy entails, and it sets the terms for debate in a manner that is often unproductive. It is important to distinguish here between two ways of justifying a program such as the NSA surveillance and data mining program. First is to not recognize a problem. This is how the "nothing to hide" argument works. It denies even the existence of a problem. The second manner of justifying such a program is to acknowledge the problems but contend that the benefits of the NSA program outweigh the privacy harms. The first justification influences the second, for the low value given to privacy is based upon a narrow view of the problem. The key misunderstanding is that the "nothing to hide" argument views privacy in a particular way - as a

You systems administrator knows more about you than you think.

More than one-third of information technology professionals abuse administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues' salary details or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey. Data security company Cyber-Ark surveyed more than 400 senior IT professionals in the United States and Britain, and found that 35 percent admitted to snooping, while 74 percent said they could access information that was not relevant to their role. In a similar survey 12 months ago, 33 percent of IT professionals admitted to snooping. "Employee snooping on sensitive information continues unabated," Udi Mokady, CEO of Cyber-Ark, said in a statement. Cyber-Ark said the most common areas respondents indicated they access are HR records, followed by customer databases, M&A plans, layoff lists and lastly, marketing information. "While seemingly innocuous, (unmanaged privileged) accounts provide workers with the 'keys to the kingdom,' allowing them to access critically sensitive information," Mokady said. When IT professionals were asked what kind of data they would take with them if fired, the survey found a jump compared with a year ago in the number of respondents who said they would take proprietary data and information that is critical to maintaining competitive advantage and corporate security. The survey found a six-fold increase in staff who would take financial reports or merger and acquisition plans, and a four-fold increase in those who would take CEO passwords and research and development plans.

BBC Click's tweet states that they took legal advice following comments on the potential violation of U.K's Computer Misuse Act. There's a slight chance that you may have unknowingly participated in a recent experiment conducted by the BBC. In a bit of an awkward and highly unnecessary move, a team at the BBC's technology program Click has purchased a botnet consisting of 22,000 malware infected PCs, self-spammed themselves on a Gmail account, and later on DDoS-ed a a backup site owned by security company Prevx (with prior agreement), all for the sake of proving that botnets in general do what they're supposed to - facilitate cybercrime. A video of the experiment is already available. Here are more details : Upon finishing the experiment, they claim to have shut down the botnet, and interestingly notified the affected users. Exposing cybercrime or exposing the obvious, the experiment raises a lot of ethical issues. For instance, how did they manage to contact the owners of the infected hosts given that according to the team they didn't access any personal information on them? It appears that they modified the desktop wallpapers of all the infected hosts to include a link notifying them that they've been part of the experiment. Thanks, but no thanks.

Visit the Amazon.com site to buy a book online and your welcome page will include recommendations for other books you might enjoy, including the latest from your favorite authors, all based on your history of purchases. Most customers appreciate these suggestions, much the way they would recommendations by a local librarian. But, what if you visited an investment site, only to find advertising messages suggesting therapies for your recently diagnosed heart condition? Chances are that you would experience what Fran Maier calls the "creepiness" factor, a sense that someone has been snooping into a part of your life that should remain private. Maier is the Executive Director of TrustE, a nonprofit that sets guidelines for online privacy and awards a seal of approval to companies meeting those guidelines. She was a speaker at the recent Supernova conference, an annual technology event in San Francisco organized by Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach in collaboration with Wharton. Creepiness Factor The creepiness factor is a risk inherent in so-called behavioral targeting. This practice is based on marketers anonymously observing a user's behavior on the Internet and compiling a personal profile based on interests and behavior -- sites visited, searches conducted, articles read, even emails written and received. Based on their profiles, users receive advertising targeted specifically to them, regardless of where they travel on the web. Consumer advocates worry that online data collection and tracking is going too far. Marketing executives counter that consumers benefit from seeing advertising relevant to their interests and contend that relinquishing some personal data is a reasonable trade-off for free access to Internet content, much of it supported by advertising.