Group items tagged

Defunct behavioral targeting company NebuAd did not just spur complaints by lawmakers and privacy advocates. This week, NebuAd's defense lawyers filed papers with the federal district court in San Francisco asking to withdraw as counsel in a privacy lawsuit. In a motion dated Monday, attorney Thomas Gilbertsen alleges that NebuAd is behind on its legal bills -- in some cases by more than 45 days. He also argues that because NebuAd is out of business, no officers or employees are available to help with the defense. "Because NebuAd has essentially ceased to exist, it can no longer participate in this case," states the motion. Gilbertsen also asked that the case be delayed pending NebuAd's liquidation and the resolution of creditors' claims. Gilbertsen also says in court papers that counsel and NebuAd have "irreconcilable differences." He did not elaborate in the motion or return messages seeking comment.

LifeLock Inc., the identity-theft protection company that boasts 1.5 million customers, is embroiled in legal battles with critics who say its key service breaks the law and its advertising defrauds consumers. A federal judge has ruled that the Tempe-based company's practice of setting fraud alerts for consumers with the three main credit bureaus - a major part of its $10-a-month service - is illegal. LifeLock filed a motion challenging the decision. If the court sides with LifeLock's opponents, the decision could stunt the growth of one of the shining stars of Arizona's startup community, forcing the company to permanently alter its practices.

"Computer scientists have recently undermined our faith in the privacy-protecting power of anonymization, the name for techniques that protect the privacy of individuals in large databases by deleting information like names and social security numbers. These scientists have demonstrated that they can often "reidentify" or "deanonymize" individuals hidden in anonymized data with astonishing ease. By understanding this research, we realize we have made a mistake, labored beneath a fundamental misunderstanding, which has assured us much less privacy than we have assumed. This mistake pervades nearly every information privacy law, regulation, and debate, yet regulators and legal scholars have paid it scant attention. We must respond to the surprising failure of anonymization, and this Article provides the tools to do so."

Assumption of privacy through anonymization of data is called into question by deanonymization techniques. The work is not new but its implications have gone under-realized. In a country struggling to understand how to even define privacy, will anyone listen?

"In a case that could prove to be one of the most important privacy rights battles of the modern era, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear argument this week on the proper legal standard to apply when prosecutors demand cell phone location data. The data, which are recorded about once every seven seconds whenever a cell phone is turned on, effectively track the whereabouts and the comings and goings of every cell phone user. Justice Department lawyers argue that, by statute, they need only show "reasonable grounds" to believe that such records are "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation." But a federal magistrate judge in Pittsburgh strongly disagreed in February 2008, issuing a 52-page opinion that said the prosecutors must meet the "probable cause" standard. "This court believes that citizens continue to hold a reasonable expectation of privacy in the information the government seeks regarding their physical movements/locations -- even now that such information is routinely produced by their cell phones -- and that, therefore, the government's investigatory search of such information continues to be protected by the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement," U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan wrote."

Turn the cell phone off and put on your tin foil hat so the government and aliens can't track you!

"Lora Bentley spoke with Anzen analysts Megan Brister and Jordan Prokopy via e-mail regarding behavioral advertising - what companies are doing, what regulators want to do and what we, as advertising consumers, need to know. With their coworker Miyo Yamashita, the analysts recently wrote a guest opinion for IT Business Edge. Bentley: Why are so many concerned about privacy when it comes to behavioral advertising? What is it about the Internet that convinces consumers that information they share there is not being used? Brister and Prokopy: Most concerns stem from the lack of transparency around data disclosure practices. While consumers may value a Web site's product and service offerings, they are generally unaware that businesses share their information with an extensive group of other businesses in order to deliver targeted advertising. This group includes news Web sites, advertising networks, profiling services, and Web analytics providers, to name a few. As Pamela Jones Harbour, a Commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), discussed at the FTC Roundtable earlier this week, there is an asymmetry between consumer perceptions and business realities. Once consumers are informed of businesses' data handling practices, they will want to have more control over how businesses manage their information. As we discuss in our article, some businesses engaged in online behavioral advertising have been slow to adopt transparent consumer data management policies. This is a concern particularly for vulnerable groups, such as minors or non-English speaking consumers, because they may not understand legally written policies. Consumer advocacy groups argue that without knowledge and control over the collection, use, and disclosure of data, Web sites may misuse or expose sensitive data about consumers' health, lifestyles and finances."

"Reporting from Washington - When your doctor writes you a prescription, that's just between you, your doctor and maybe your health insurance company -- right? Wrong. As things stand now, the pharmaceutical companies that make those prescription drugs are looking over the doctor's shoulder to keep track of how many prescriptions for each drug the physician is writing. By obtaining data from pharmacies and health insurers, the drug companies learn the prescribing habits of thousands of doctors. That information has become not just a powerful sales and marketing tool for the pharmaceutical industry but also a source of growing concern among some elected officials, healthcare advocates and legal authorities. "

"We all know that Internet and communications technology is changing rapidly, creating huge opportunities for business innovation and individual self-expression. Most people are probably not aware, however, that privacy law is not evolving nearly as quickly. It is time to update legal protections to reflect the impact the digital revolution is having on modern life. Cloud computing -- a bit of tech-jargon meaning the use of remote servers to store and process data -- is a great example. The movement of personal and proprietary data off desktop computers and into "the cloud", which is made up of server farms and broadband connections, is a major disruptive trend in computing. Unless our laws change to account for cloud computing and other equally momentous technology developments, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable search and seizure will become a relic of the past. The federal law setting standards for government access to personal communications -- the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) -- was written more than two decades ago, before the Internet took off. "

"In light of a spike in identity theft and the frequency with which personal information is stored on portable devices, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) have expanded Generally Accepted Privacy Principles (GAPP) to include protocols for securing and disposing of personal information. "Safeguarding personal information is one of the most challenging responsibilities facing an organization, whether such information pertains to employees or customers," said Everett C. Johnson, CPA, chair of AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force and a past international president of ISACA, a global information technology association. "We've updated the criteria of our privacy principles to minimize the risks to personal information." GAPP offers guidance and best practices on securing portable devices, breach management and ensuring continued effectiveness of privacy controls. The guidance additionally covers disposal and destruction of personal information. The principles are designed for chief privacy officers, executive management, compliance officers, legal counsel, CPAs and CAs offering technology advisory services. "Portable tools such as laptops and memory sticks provide convenience to employees but appropriate measures must be put in place to secure them and the data they contain," said Donald Sheehy, CA.CISA, CIPP/C, associate partner with Deloitte (Canada) and a member of the AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force. "We must stay abreast of technological advances to assure that proper measures are put into place to defend against any new threats." Created by the AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force, GAPP is designed to help an organization's management team assess an existing privacy program or address privacy obligations and risks. The principles provide a framework for CPAs and CAs to offer privacy services to their clients and employers, such as advisory services, privacy risk assessments and attestation or

"Got an e-mail list of customers or readers and want to know more about each - such as their full name, friends, gender, age, interests, location, job and education level? Facebook has just the free feature you're looking for, thanks to its recent privacy changes. The hack, first publicized by blogger Max Klein, repurposes a Facebook feature that lets people find their friends on Facebook by scanning through e-mail addresses in their contact list. But as Klein points out, a marketer could take a list of 1,000 e-mail addresses, either legally or illegally collected - and upload those through a dummy account - which then lets the user see all the profiles created using those addresses. Given Facebook's ubiquity and most people's reliance on a single e-mail address, the harvest could be quite rich. Using a simple scraping tool, a marketer could then turn a list of e-mail addresses into a rich, full-fledged set of marketing profiles, with names, pictures, ages, locations, interests, photos, wall posts, affiliations and names of your friends, depending on how users have their profiles set. Run a few algorithms on that data and you can start to make inferences about race, income, sexual orientation and interests. While that information isn't available for all users, Facebook changed its privacy settings in early December so that certain information can't be made private, including one's name, current city, profile picture, gender, networks and friend list (the latter can be somewhat hidden from public view). Anyone with your e-mail address can harvest that information, the company admits."

Probably not limited to FaceBook

"On January 20, 2009, Heartland Payment Systems reported discovering malicious software in its payment processing system, a security breach of potentially massive magnitude given that the company's handles 100 million transactions per month for more than 250,000 businesses. While the monetary and data loses following from the penetration of Heartland's systems -- the compromise that lasted for months -- are still being determined, the financial impact on Heartland's stock price alone was devastating. " The breach, in conjunction with the economic downturn, led to the loss of about $500 million in shareholder value, more than three-quarters of the company's market capitalization, two months after the news was announced. And then there's the cost of more than several dozen breach-related lawsuits filed against the company this year and related expenses. According to slides presented in August at a National Retail Federation Conference by Robert O. Carr, Heartland's founder, chairman and CEO, the breach cost the company $32 million in legal fees, fines, settlements, and forensics during just the first half of the year.

The European Commission started legal action against Britain on Tuesday for what the EU executive called a failure to keep people's online details confidential. EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said the action related to how Internet service providers used Phorm (PHOR.L) technology to send subscribers tailor-made advertisements based on websites visited. Reding said Internet users in Britain had complained about the way the UK applied EU rules on privacy and electronic communications that were meant to prohibit interception and surveillance without the user's consent. "Technologies like Internet behavioural advertising can be useful for businesses and consumers but they must be used in a way that complies with EU rules," Reding said in a statement. "We have been following the Phorm case for some time and have concluded that there are problems in the way the UK has implemented parts of the EU rules on the confidentiality of communications," Reding said. She called on Britain to change its national laws to ensure there were proper sanctions to enforce EU confidentiality rules. Unless Britain complies, Reding has the power to issue a final warning before taking the country to the 27-nation EU's top court, the European Court of Justice. If it rules in favour of the European Commission, the court can force Britain to change its laws. (Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by Dale Hudson)

making best indexing in goggle and bing. RADJASEOTEA is a master of backlinks. You want indexing in goggle and bing. LOOK THIS www.fiverr.com/radjaseotea/making-best-super-backlink-143445

When ethical hackers track down computer criminals, do they risk prosecution themselves? Security researchers at this week's Usenix conference in Boston believe this is a danger, and that ethical hackers have to develop a uniform code of ethics for themselves before the federal government decides to take action on its own. One such researcher introduced himself by saying "Hi, I'm Dave Dittrich, and I'm a computer criminal." Dittrich, senior security engineer and researcher at the University of Washington's Information School, has not been unlucky enough to be prosecuted. But ten years ago, he took actions to disrupt distributed denial-of-service attacks which he says could have been construed as criminal, he says. Working within the University of Washington Network, Dittrich says he "copied files from one host in Canada that was caching malicious software and logs of compromised hosts," allowing him to gain a fuller understanding of the nascent distributed denial-of-service tools, and to inform the operators of infected Web sites that a problem existed.

With the nation's strictest data security law set to take effect Jan. 1 in Massachusetts, mobile phone merchant Dennis Kelly plans to parlay the regulations into a competitive advantage. Kelly will display signs at each point-of-sale device inside 28 Wireless City shops, of which he is co-owner, stating that the company complies with the state's new mandate and that protecting customers' personal information is a company-wide priority. He says that as his business has grown in a few short years, adhering to the new requirements - namely, establishing an official information security policy and deploying more stringent access control solutions - was necessary, regardless of the impending legal obligation. And now he wants to show that investment off. "We can set ourselves apart from competitors by communicating that we take this stuff seriously," he says. "I think we will be somewhat unique in that regard." Kelly's take on the regulations - the first time any state has issued such a comprehensive and prescriptive list of measures that must be taken to protect data - appears to be in direct contrast to most other business owners across the Bay State.

www.killdo.de.gg Most quality online stores. Know whether you are a trusted online retailer in the world. Whatever we can buy very good quality. and do not hesitate. Everything is very high quality. Including clothes, accessories, bags, cups. Highly recommended. This is one of the trusted online store in the world. View now www.retrostyler.com

Last week, the government took another step toward closing a legal loophole in federal privacy and security rules for emerging Health 2.0 information technology applications by issuing proposed rules aimed at covering an estimated 900 companies and organizations offering personal health records and electronic systems connected to them. The Federal Trade Commission was careful to point out its new interim proposed rule on federal breach notification requirements for the developers of electronic PHR systems did not apply to covered organizations or their business associates as defined by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, heretofore the key federal privacy and security regulation. The FTC, operating under new authority given it by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, noted that its new rule seeks to cover previously unregulated entities that are part of a Health 2.0 product mix. FTC staff estimates that about 200 PHR vendors, another 500 related entities and 200 third-party service providers will be subject to the new breach notification rule. The staffers estimate that the 900 affected companies and organizations, on average, will experience 11 breaches each per year at a total cost of about $1 million per group, per year. Costs include investigating the breach, notifying consumers and establishing toll-free numbers for explaining the breaches and providing additional information to consumers. Pam Dixon, founder and executive director of the World Privacy Forum, said that this isn't the first involvement of the FTC in healthcare-related regulation, noting the consumer protection agency joined with the Food and Drug Administration in a joint statement on the marketing of direct-to-consumer genetic tests. The FTC also has worked in the field of healthcare competition. She noted the compliance deadline with the FTC's "red flag rules" on provider organizations that provide consumer credit to patients for installment payment

Set of podcasts providing a road map through the 4th Amendment of the Constitution, particularly a 4th Amendment search. Intended to give you a step-by-step approach through the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States as it applies to searches, your expectation of privacy and related issues.

making best indexing in goggle and bing. RADJASEOTEA is a master of backlinks. You want indexing in goggle and bing. LOOK THIS www.fiverr.com/radjaseotea/making-best-super-backlink-143445

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday that it has reopened the public comment period on a proposal for a model privacy form that financial institutions could use to provide disclosures required by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). The commission is reopening the comment period in order to solicit public comment on the results of recent quantitative consumer testing conducted to evaluate the form. In March 2007, pursuant to the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006, the SEC, together with seven other federal regulators, proposed a model privacy form designed to allow consumers easily to compare privacy practices of financial institutions. The jointly developed model form uses easily readable type font and is designed to be succinct and comprehensible. Under the proposal, financial institutions that chose to use the model privacy form would satisfy GLBA disclosure requirements and could take advantage of a legal "safe harbor." The SEC has reopened the comment period on the proposal to provide all persons who are interested in this matter an opportunity to comment on the results of the recent testing of the model privacy form.

Like this http://cheaptravelbooker.com Like this http://cheaptravelbooker.com like this http://killdo.de.gg travel,hotel,fun,hotel new,new offer,hotel best,best hotel,hotel travel,seo,backlinks,edu,gov,ads,indexing,bookmark,killgoggle,gogglesuck,goggle bookmark,kill goggle,yahoo,bing,indexing,quality links,linkwell,traffic boster,index best

Amazon has opted out of Phorm's controversial targeted advertising technology, delivering a serious blow to the UK-listed company which has already prompted a European commission legal action against the British government. Phorm's technology, which is yet to be launched in the UK, allows ISPs to track their customers' activity on the internet in order to target adverts on pages they subsequently visit. Amazon's absence from Phorm's Webwise system deprives the company of the second most visited destination, after eBay.co.uk, among shopping and classified websites in the UK, according to data from Hitwise. It means Phorm will not have access to crucial information about what Amazon users are interested in. Last month the Open Rights Group, privacy campaigners, sent a letter to nine of the internet's biggest names, including Amazon, Google, Bebo, Facebook and Yahoo, asking them to opt out of Phorm's technology "to protect your users' privacy". Google and Bebo are actively considering whether to opt out and a spokesman for Amazon said the company has now removed all its domain names - including Amazon.com - from Webwise. A spokesman for Phorm said the company does not comment on individual cases but the it is understood to be planning a meeting with Amazon's management to explain the benefits of the Webwise system.

Like this http://www.hdfilmsaati.net Film,dvd,download,free download,product... ppc,adword,adsense,amazon,clickbank,osell,bookmark,dofollow,edu,gov,ads,linkwell,traffic,scor,serp,goggle,bing,yahoo.ads,ads network,ads goggle,bing,quality links,link best,ptr,cpa,bpa. www.killdo.de.gg

Laws in Canada and other countries are increasingly helping technology force people to identify themselves where they never had to before, threatening privacy that allows people to function effectively in society, a new study has found. "What we're starting to see is a move toward making people more and more identifiable," University of Ottawa law professor Ian Kerr said Wednesday. His comments followed the launch of Lessons from the Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society, a book summing up the study's findings, at a public reading in downtown Ottawa hosted jointly with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Kerr led the study with University of Ottawa criminology professor Valerie Steeves. They collaborated with 35 other researchers in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands and Italy. The researchers reported that governments are choosing laws that require people to identify themselves and are lowering judicial thresholds defining when identity information must be disclosed to law enforcement officials. That is allowing the wider use of new technologies capable of making people identifiable, including smartcards, security cameras, GPS, tracking cookies and DNA sequencing. Consequently, governments and corporations are able to do things like: * Embrace technologies such as radio frequency identification tags that can be used to track people and merchandise to analyze behaviour. * Boost video surveillance in public places. * Pressure companies such as internet service providers to collect and maintain records of identification information about their customers. While Canada, the U.K., the Netherlands and Italy all have national laws protecting privacy - that is, laws that allow citizens to control access to their personal data - such legal protection does not exist for anonymity, Kerr said. "Canada is quite similar [to other countries] with respect to anonymity. Namely, it's shrinking here just as it is there.

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.

Last month, the digital advertising industry's use of behaviorally targeted advertising gained a reprieve of sorts when the Federal Trade Commission issued a final report confirming its earlier support of self-regulation. But some commission members remained concerned about ads that are shown to Web users based on their previous online activities, and in particular the possibility of violations of online privacy. Some form of legal restrictions may be imposed on the industry, the FTC indicated, if the online ad industry isn't up to the task of regulating itself. "Privacy is definitely the biggest concern today," said Joe Apprendi, CEO of Collective Media, an online advertising network based in New York. "There has been the concern that through such approaches as deep-packet technology, companies can leverage information through subscriber-based providers to marry anonymous behavioral segment data and identify real people. "The fact is, online advertising is subject to a higher standard that offline direct marketing tactics," Apprendi said. The FTC report, "Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising," continues to advocate voluntary industry self-regulation, in keeping with its principles governing online behavioral advertising issued at the end of 2007, despite the urgings of consumer advocacy groups that it impose rules regulating online advertising. The commission's new guidelines are based on four principles: * Transparency and consumer control. The commission advises that Web sites that collect data for behavioral advertising provide "a clear, concise, consumer-friendly and prominent statement" that the data are being collected to provide ads tailored to the user's interests and that the user has an easy and obvious way to choose whether to allow this. * Security for data retention. Companies that collect data for behavioral advertising should provide "reasonable" protection of that information and reta