According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the three credit reporting agencies are blocking referral links to the Annual Credit Report website they created to conform to the new federal law giving consumers the right to an annual free credit report:Although…
Read More Credit Reporting Agencies Blocking Referrals to Free Credit Report Website
David Fraser at The Privacy Law Blog has an excellent post today cataloging incidents over the past year related to inappropriate release of personal information. The list is frightening both for its length and for the realization that countless incidents…
Read More Summary of incidents cataloged at The Privacy Law Blog
Rob Hyndman reacts to the increasing number of reports of identity thefts and personal data disclosures by speculating whether Americans are now ready to do something about it:There has been an increasing number of media stories lately on this topic,…
Read More Is Momentum Building Against Database Aggregation of Personal Data?
Bruce Schneier provides his thoughts on the ChoicePoint fiasco, noting that until companies like ChoicePoint are forced to absorb (financially) the full costs of ID theft, they'll continue to treat our personal information merely as a commodity:Identity theft is the…
Wired News reports that citizens who fall victim to ID theft becuase of the ChoicePoint debacle will find it difficult to recover damages for their losses if they decide to seek recourse against ChoicePoint:Legal experts say that people who suffered…
It appears that Paris Hilton's Sidekick was hacked becuase her secret question was "What's your favorite pet's name?" The answer, of course, was her dog, Tinkerbell, who is almost as famous as she is.This is what Bruce Schneier has called…
In the aftermath of the ChoicePoint security breach(here and here), the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has produced a lengthy page on what the incident means to you and what data aggregators like ChoicePoint may have on you:Many consumers who contact the…
The major credit bureaus have the right to sell your personal information to credit card and insurance companies, resulting in the deluge of junk mail. But you have the right to exclude your name from preapproval lists (either permanently or…
(via A blog doesn't need a clever name)Richard Smith at ComputerBytesMan writes about how a frequent shopping card database led to a false arrest:Tukwila, Washington firefighter, Philip Scott Lyons found out the hard way that supermarket loyalty cards can come…
Read More Safeway Shopper Card Leads to (false) Arson Arrest
More news outlets are finally covering this story (CNN, Reuters, ZDNet). Interesting, however, is that the AP story (picked up by the Washington Post, LA Times, and others) label the perpetrators as "hackers" who "penetrated the company's computer network." Nowhere…
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