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Karl Wabst

AFP: Web founder makes online privacy plea - 0 views

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    Plans by Internet service providers to deliver targeted adverts to consumers based on their Web searches threaten online privacy and should be opposed, the founder of the Web said Wednesday. "I just want to know that when I click on a link it is between me and the Web, and the Internet service provider is not going to immediately characterise me in different categories for advertising or insurance of for government use," Tim Berners-Lee told a Web conference in Madrid. "The postman does not open my mail, the telephone company does not listen to my telephone conversations. Internet use is often more intimate than those things," he added. New software called Webwise allows Internet service providers to show adverts to their clients based on their Web browsing habits instead of based on the content of a single Web page as currently happens. Several British Internet service providers, including BT and Virgin Media, have said they are considering using the software, which is aimed at making the Web more financially profitable for advertisers. With the help of other scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), Berners-Lee set up the Web in 1989 to allow thousands of scientists around the world to stay in touch. The WWW technology -- which simplifies the process of searching for information on the Internet -- was first made more widely available from 1991 after CERN was unable to ensure its development, and the organisation made a landmark decision two years later not to levy royalties.
Karl Wabst

AT&T Backs Privacy Rules - WSJ.com - 0 views

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    As the impact of digital advertising on consumer privacy comes under scrutiny, AT&T is taking a stance in support of stricter standards. Rep. Rick Boucher (D., Va.), chairman of the subcommittee, said in an interview Wednesday that a statute is needed to regulate how companies collect, share and use data on consumers' behavior in targeting online advertising. While ad targeting on the Web has been at the forefront of privacy advocates' concerns, worries are growing about other media, ranging from mobile phones to emerging TV technologies. To sell marketers targeted ads, technology and media companies collect data about customers, ranging from the Web sites they visit to the neighborhoods they live in to the TV shows they watch. Marketers often will pay a premium for this form of advertising because it allows them to show their ads to consumers who are likelier to buy their products or services. "Pitfalls arise because behavioral advertising in its current forms is largely invisible to consumers," says Dorothy Attwood, AT&T's senior vice president of public policy and chief privacy officer, in prepared testimony she is expected to deliver at the hearing of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. Her statement says consumers don't fully understand that their online activity is used to create detailed profiles of them. Internet and other media companies say the data they use to target ads are anonymous and can't be traced to individual consumers. AT&T plans to argue that consumers should have "full and complete" notice of what information is collected about them and how it is used and protected, and should have tools that let them determine whether their Web activities are being tracked. The company says it won't use consumer information for online behavioral advertising unless it first obtains consent from the consumers involved. AT&T's stance contrasts with the position taken by most big Internet companies and industry trade grou
Karl Wabst

Defence Management - JSF security breach linked to China - 0 views

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    China has denied allegations that it hacked into a Pentagon IT system and recovered plans for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The combat aircraft which is to be procured by Britain as well, is being produced by Lockheed Martin. In allegations first reported in the Wall Street Journal, hackers stole "several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems". The most sensitive data however on weapons systems and its stealth technology was not breached since it is kept on computers not connected to the internet. IT experts have said that they suspect the hackers came from China although it will be difficult to identify their exact origins. Hacking into IT systems as complex as the DoD's would require the help and capabilities of another government. Recovering data on the JSF would allow countries or rogue groups who could face the aircraft in future conflicts to develop counter measures based on the aircraft's weaknesses. The Chinese strongly denied that the breach originated from their country. "China has not changed its stance on hacking. China has always been against hacking and we have cracked down very hard on hacking. This is not a Chinese phenomenon. It happens everywhere in the world," a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry said. This is not the first time the JSF's security has been breached. Early on in the contract the DoD and Lockheed Martin admitted that there was no universal IT security policy for the 1,200 sub contractors and that leaks may have occurred. BAE subsequently admitted that their IT security for JSF material was lax and that leaks could have occurred. Britain is scheduled to buy 150 of the aircraft by 2018.
Karl Wabst

RSA: Microsoft Pushes 'Geneva' In War On Passwords -- Microsoft Security -- Information... - 0 views

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    A year after Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie urged the technology industry to come together to create a more trustworthy Internet, the company's vision of End to End Trust is starting to take shape. At the RSA Conference this year, Scott Charney, Microsoft's corporate VP of Trustworthy Computing, plans to deliver a progress report on his company's campaign to move beyond the password as a means of authentication.
Karl Wabst

Privacy laws: Leading the charge - SC Magazine US - 0 views

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    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.
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Karl Wabst

Insurance & Technology Blog: US Military Takes the First Step on Electronic Health ... - 1 views

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    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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Karl Wabst

Wikipedia Opts Out of Phorm User-Tracking | Epicenter from Wired.com - 0 views

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    Wikipedia told the controversial U.K. advertising firm Phorm on Thursday not to spy on Wikipedia's users, saying the company's plan to monitor what sites people visit on the net invaded people's privacy. Wikipedia now joins Amazon.co.uk in opting out of the Big-Brother-esque marketing scheme and creating the possibility of a mass opt-out by the net's largest websites. Phorm wants to pay ISPs -- such as British Telecom -- to let it build marketing profiles of its subscribers by installing boxes inside the ISP that monitor every url users visit and every search they run. Using those profiles, Phorm can charge advertisers high rates to serve targeted ads. But in an email sent Thursday, Wikimedia.org told Phorm not to record anything about urls from domains it controls, ranging from Wikiquotes to Wikipedia -- one of the most popular sites on the net. Phorm operates an opt-out system for sites and ISP customers, but it would be virtually impossible to verify if the company actually complied with such requests. "The Wikimedia Foundation requests that our web sites including Wikipedia.org and all related domains be excluded from scanning by the Phorm / BT Webwise system, as we consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors' behavior by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy," the email read, according to a Wikimedia blog post.
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Karl Wabst

Amazon opts out of Phorm's targeted internet advertising system after privacy fears | T... - 0 views

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    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.
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Karl Wabst

Deloitte Survey Finds Healthy Consumer Demand For Electronic Health Records, Online Too... - 0 views

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    As health care providers determine how they will take advantage of the $19 billion allocated in the stimulus package to help jumpstart advances in health information technology (HIT), consumer appetite for electronic health records (EHRs), online tools and services is also growing, according to the results of the 2009 Deloitte Survey of Health Care Consumers (www.deloitte.com/us/2009consumersurvey). While only 9 percent of consumers surveyed have an electronic personal health record (PHR), 42 percent are interested in establishing PHRs connected online to their physicians. Fifty-five percent want the ability to communicate with their doctor via email to exchange health information and get answers to questions. Fifty-seven percent reported they'd be interested in scheduling appointments, buying prescriptions and completing other transactions online if their information is protected. Technologies that can facilitate consumer transactions with providers and health plans, like integrated billing systems that make bill payment faster and more convenient, are also appealing to nearly half (47 percent) of consumers surveyed. The survey of more than 4,000 U.S. consumers 18 and over was released today at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference held in Chicago. It is the second annual study examining health care consumers' attitudes, behaviors and unmet needs conducted by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions offering health care industry leaders and policymakers a timely look at how health care consumerism is evolving. "Consumers are increasingly embracing innovations that enhance self-care, convenience, personalization and control of personal health information," said Paul H. Keckley, Ph.D., executive director, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. "Consumers want a bigger say in their health care decisions. Consumer demand for HIT and its potential impact on reforming the system has never been stronger." Despite strong con
Karl Wabst

Heartland Payment Systems to vigorously defend breach claims, CEO says - 0 views

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    Heartland Payment Systems Inc., which announced a breach of potentially millions of credit and debit cards last month, said it plans to vigorously defend itself against lawsuits filed as a result of the data breach. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Heartland Chairman and CEO Robert Carr acknowledged the claims that cardholders, card issuers, the credit card brands, regulators, and others have asserted, or may assert, against the payment processor as a result of the breach and the impact it could have on the business. Several class action lawsuits have been filed against Heartland, claiming that the payment processor issued belated and inaccurate statements when it announced a security breach of its systems. Carr He said the company could not "reasonably estimate the potential impact of the breach on the day-to-day operations" of the business. "We intend to vigorously defend any such claims and we believe we have meritorious defenses to those claims that have been asserted to date," Carr said. "At this time we do not have information that would enable us to reasonably estimate the amount of losses we might incur in connection with such claims." The Princeton, N.J.-based payment processor announced Jan. 20 that its systems were breached last year when intruders installed malware to pilfer data crossing the company's network. Since then, Sherriff's authorities in Tallahassee, Fla. arrested three suspects for using stolen credit card numbers to make purchases at local Wal-Mart stores. The credit card numbers used by the trio were allegedly stolen from the Heartland processing center in New Jersey. Carr said the company's sales force was doing well despite the obvious challenges caused by the combination of the downturn in the economy and the data security breach. The payment processor's current customer base has responded positively, he said. "In the weeks since our announcement of the breach, we have installed more margin, and have a bit
Karl Wabst

Obama hints at cybersecurity shake-up with review | Politics and Law - CNET News - 0 views

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    In a move that could reshape the federal government's cybersecurity efforts, President Obama on Monday said a former Booz Allen consultant would conduct an immediate two-month review of all related agency activities. The announcement indicates that the White House's National Security Council may wrest significant authority away from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which weathered withering criticism last fall for its lackluster efforts. Obama selected Melissa Hathaway, who worked for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration and was director of an multi-agency "Cyber Task Force," to conduct the review with an eye to ensuring that cybersecurity efforts are well-integrated and competently managed. "The president is confident that we can protect our nation's critical cyber infrastructure while at the same time adhering to the rule of law and safeguarding privacy rights and civil liberties," said John Brennan, the president's homeland security adviser. Hathaway's appointment comes as Obama plans to overhaul the National Security Council, expanding its membership and effectively centralizing more decision-making in the White House staff. That would vest more authority in a staff run by James L. Jones, a former Marine Corps commandant who warned at a speech in Munich over the weekend that terrorists could use "cyber-technologies" to cause catastrophic damage. During a panel discussion that CNET News wrote about last fall, Hathaway defended Homeland Security's efforts to develop what it called a National Cyber Security Initiative, saying there was "unprecedented bipartisan support" for it. "Over the past year cyber exploitation has grown more sophisticated, more targeted, and we expect these trends to continue," she added. "Our cybersecurity approach to date has not kept up with the threats we've seen."
Karl Wabst

The Broadband Gap: Why Is Theirs Cheaper? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    Broadband is cheaper in many other countries than in the United States. "You have a pretty uncompetitive market by European standards," said Tim Johnson, the chief analyst at Point-Topic, a London consulting firm. Other countries have lower costs for the same reasons their DSL service is faster. Dense urban areas reduce some of the cost of building networks. In addition, governments in some countries subsidized fiber networks. But the big difference between the United States and most other countries is competition. "Now hold on there," you might say to me. Since I wrote that many countries don't have cable systems and the bulk of broadband is run by way of DSL through existing phone wires, how can there be competition? Aren't those owned by monopoly phone companies? True enough. But most big countries have devised a system to create competition by forcing the phone companies to share their lines and facilities with rival Internet providers. Not surprisingly, the phone companies hate this idea, often called unbundling, and tend to drag their feet when it is introduced. So it requires rather diligent regulators to force the telcos to play fair. And the effect of this scheme depends a lot on details of what equipment is shared and at what prices. Britain has gone the furthest, forcing BT Group to split off a unit that operates the actual network and sells to various voice and Internet providers, including its own telephone service, on an equal basis. The United States was early with this sort of approach, requiring telephone companies to allow rival Internet service providers to sell DSL service using their networks. The way these rules were written, however, meant the wholesale cost was so high that providers like AOL and Earthlink couldn't offer a better deal than the telcos themselves. And the plan was largely abandoned in 2003 by the Federal Communications Commission on the theory that the country is better served by encouraging competition
Karl Wabst

The Broadband Gap: Why Is Theirs Faster? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    Bits readers have a serious case of broadband envy. I've been writing about the debate about how the government might encourage more high-speed Internet use and you've complained loudly that people in other countries have faster, cheaper, more widely available broadband service. Even customer-service representatives of Internet service providers overseas are nicer too. I don't know about manners, but it's easy to find examples that American's broadband is second-rate: In Japan, broadband service running at 150 megabits per second (Mbps) costs $60 a month. The fastest service available now in the United States is 50 Mbps at a price of $90 to $150 a month. In London, $9 a month buys 8 Mbps service. In New York, broadband starts at $20 per month, for 1 Mbps. In Iceland, 83 percent of the households are connected to broadband. In the United States, the adoption rate is 59 percent. There's more than just envy at stake here. President Obama campaigned on a promise of fast broadband service for all. On the White House Web site, he writes "America should lead the world in broadband penetration and Internet access." And the recent stimulus bill requires the Federal Communications Commission to create a national broadband plan in order to make high-speed Internet service both more available and more affordable. I've spent the last week trolling through reports and talking to people who study broadband deployment around the world to see what explains the faster and cheaper service in many countries. We'll start with where the United States isn't doing quite so badly: the basic speed of broadband service. If you take out the countries that have made significant investment in fiber optic networks - Japan, Korea and Sweden - the United States is in the middle of the pack when it comes to network speed.
Karl Wabst

Mixed reception to Mass. data regs changes - Mass High Tech Business News - 0 views

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    Mixed receptionThe state hopes changes to Massachusetts' data privacy regulation plan will calm business community fears over the cost of the new controls, but watchers of the process say the government may have made things worse. One thing seems certain: the recent changes aren't likely to be the last word on regulating sensitive data in the Bay State. The regulations mandate all "personal information" belonging to Massachusetts residents be encrypted whenever it is stored on portable devices, transmitted wirelessly or shared on public networks. Changes enacted just in time to beat a deadline of Thursday, Feb. 12, pushed the effective date back eight months, from May 1 to Jan. 1, 2010. They also removed a requirement that businesses certify third-party vendors' compliance. The latter move was aimed to address an issue raised in a public hearing with business leaders held Jan. 15 at the State House. The change was designed to make the third-party regulations more adaptable to companies of various sizes and business models, said Massachusetts Consumer Affairs undersecretary Daniel Crane.
Karl Wabst

Cablevision To Aim Ads At 500,000 Subscribers - 2009-03-04 17:37:41 - Multichannel News - 0 views

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    Cablevision Systems announced it will expand its addressable-advertising capabilities to be able to deliver TV spots based on an individual subscriber's demographic data to some 500,000 households across the New York metro area this summer. The half-million-homes deployment -- representing cable's largest with addressable advertising to date -- comes after an 18-month trial covering 100,000 households, in which Cablevision tested the targeted form advertising for its Optimum-branded services. According to Cablevision, the trial showed a "double-digit" lift in sales in areas that received the addressable ads compared with homes that did not. After building out to 500,000 households across multiple zones within the New York DMA, Cablevision ultimately expects to bring addressability to all of its 2.8 million digital TV subscribers. The expanded deployment includes unidentified "top national brands," represented by media agencies GroupM, Starcom MediaVest Group and Universal McCann. Cablevision said it already has placed addressable ads from outside advertisers, but it has not identified those customers publicly. Addressable advertising, considered a holy grail of advertising in combining broad reach with demographic targeting, is also a core part of the mission for Canoe Ventures, the joint venture of Cablevision and five other MSOs. But Canoe, at least initially, will provide targeting at the zone level not the household level. Independent of Canoe, Cablevision is moving ahead on several advanced-advertising initiatives. Earlier this week Cablevision and its Rainbow Media programming unit announced plans to offer interactive advertising products and applications to media buyers during this year's upfronts, which would be available in inventory on five Rainbow networks and be viewable to Cablevision digital cable subscribers. To deliver addressable advertising, Cablevision is using technology from Visible World, a New York-based company that works with more than
Karl Wabst

Cable Companies Target Commercials to the Audience - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    The advertiser's dream of sending a particular commercial to a specific consumer is one step closer to reality as Cablevision Systems plans to announce the largest project yet using targeted advertising on television. Beginning with 500,000 homes in Brooklyn, the Bronx and some New Jersey areas, Cablevision will use its targeting technology to route ads to specific households based on data about income, ethnicity, gender or whether the homeowner has children or pets. The technology requires no hardware or installation in a subscriber's home, so viewers may not realize they are seeing ads different from a neighbor's. But during the same show, a 50-something male may see an ad for, say, high-end speakers from Best Buy, while his neighbors with children may see one for a Best Buy video game. "We have, as an industry, been talking about this since the beginning of time," said Matt Seiler, the global chief executive of the media firm Universal McCann, a part of the Interpublic Group. "Now we've got it in 500,000 households. This is real." The potential of customized ads worries some privacy advocates, despite the assurance of cable companies that they maintain anonymity about the households. "We don't have an objection to advertising that is targeted to demographics," said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group in Washington. But, he said, there is a need to show "that they can't be reverse-engineered to find the names of individuals that were watching particular shows." Cablevision says it segments its subscribers only by demographics, so that an advertiser can divide ads among various groups: General Motors, for example, could send an ad for a Cadillac Escalade to high-income houses, a Chevrolet to low-income houses, and one in Spanish to Hispanic consumers. Cablevision matches households to demographic data to divide its customers, using the data-collection compa
Karl Wabst

Microsoft, Intel Firings Stir Resentment Over Visas - 0 views

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    With so many workers being axed, the threat to sensitive customer, corporate, military information should be examined. Once workers leave with sensitive information, good luck controlling exposure. Cross International borders and the issue potentially expands into an national "incident" with dire consequences for corporate reputation. Protectionism vs Patriotism. Issues raised in the Great Depression revisited with more impact due to expansion of the economy to global status.
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    Microsoft Corp.'s plan to eliminate U.S. workers after lobbying for more foreigner visas is stirring resentment among lawmakers and employees. As many as 5,000 employees are being shown the door at Microsoft, which uses more H1-B guest-worker visas than any other U.S. company. Some employees and politicians say Microsoft should get rid of foreigners first. "If they lay people off, are they going to think of America first or are they going to think of the world first?" Chuck Grassley, a Republican Senator from Iowa, said in an interview. He sent a letter to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer the day after Microsoft announced the job cuts last month, demanding Ballmer fire visa holders first. Across the technology industry, some of the biggest users of H1-B visas are cutting jobs, including Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. The firings at Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, came less than a year after Chairman Bill Gates lobbied Congress for an expansion of the visa program. Even before Microsoft announced the cuts, its first-ever companywide layoffs, comments on a blog run by an anonymous Microsoft worker angrily debated getting rid of guest workers first. The author of the Mini-Microsoft blog eventually had to censor and then completely block all arguments about visas, after the conversation "got downright nasty."
Karl Wabst

HIPAA changes force healthcare to improve data flow - 0 views

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    The recent U.S. stimulus bill includes $18 billion to catapult the health industry toward the world of electronic health records. This is sure to light a fire under every hungry security vendor to position itself as the essential product or service necessary to achieve HIPAA compliance. It should also motivate healthcare IT professionals to learn where their sensitive data is located and how it flows. To be sure, with federal money allocated through 2014 for the task of modernizing the healthcare industry there will be many consultant and vendor businesses that will thrive on stimulus money. Healthcare is unique in that storage of electronic health records is highly distributed between primary care physicians, specialist doctors, hospitals, and insurance/HMO organizations. Information has to be efficiently shared among these entities with great sensitivity towards patient privacy and legitimate claims processing. Patients want to prevent over zealous employers from performing unauthorized background checks on medical history; claim processors want to prevent paying fraudulent claims arising from targeted patient identity theft. The bill has two provisions which turn this into a tremendously challenging plan, and a daunting task for securing patient data: * Citizens will have the right to monitor and control use of their own health data. This implies a large centralized identity and access control service, or perhaps a federated network of patient registration directories. Authenticated users will be able to reach into the network of health databases audit use of their data and payment history. * Health organizations suffering loss of more than 500 patient records must publicly disclose the breach, starting with postings on the government's Health and Human Services website. This allows related organizations to trace the impact of the breach throughout the healthcare network, but care must be taken not to disclose vulnerabilities in the system to intruders
Karl Wabst

Google Tracker Appeals to Facebook Crowd, Spurs Privacy Worries - 0 views

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    Richard Acton-Maher of San Francisco was in nearby Berkeley last month and wanted to meet friends for lunch. Instead of making calls to see who was around, he looked at a digital map on his iPhone that plotted their locations. "One of my friends was also there," said Acton-Maher, 24, who used a service from a startup company called Loopt Inc. "I gave him a call and met him for lunch. It just enhances the communications tools that I already have." Google Inc., encouraged by people's willingness to share their personal lives on sites like Facebook, is betting more people like Acton-Maher will post their whereabouts online. The owner of the most popular search engine started a program this month called Latitude, seeking to compete with mobile networking services such as Loopt, Match2Blue, Whrrl and Limbo. Besides competition, Google's effort to turn mobile phones into tracking devices faces criticism from privacy advocates. Useful for friends and family, location data would also be valuable to the government, said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a not-for-profit organization focused on civil-liberties. "This is certainly valuable information to investigators and potentially to civil litigants," Bankston said. "This type of location information presents a very new sensitive data flow." Google says its privacy settings address such concerns. People using Google's mobile maps can opt not to use Latitude and choose whom they share their information with. The program also only stores the user's last known location, not a full history of their travels, said Steve Lee, a Google product manager. 'Ephemeral Data' While Google doesn't plan to store the data, the government could still go to court to ask for the company's help in tracking someone during an investigation, Bankston said.
Karl Wabst

Facebook retains terms of service after users voice concerns - Technology Live - USATOD... - 0 views

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    Update on Feb. 18, 8:33 a.m.: Facebook is backing off changes to its terms of service, informing users on their official blog that they will remain intact. "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," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes in the blog. "Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised." To learn more, read our original post below. Facebook is having trouble dousing the flames in a firestorm over its trustworthiness. A recent change in its terms of use -- the legalese tacked onto the bottom of most websites -- has sparked concerns that the social networking giant plans to own all users' information forever. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed in a blog post Monday that "on Facebook people own and control their information." But privacy advocates still aren't satisfied. "I think in simple terms it's a tug of war over user data," says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington. "People put information on a Facebook page to share with friends. But it's pretty much with the understanding that they're deciding what to post and who has access to it. Facebook, like any other company, is trying to obtain maximum commercial value from its users."
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