Blog Posts Tagged with Privacy and Security

Advertising keywords are the carnival barkers of the internet. Their job is to shout, “Me, me, me, me, me!” to people searching online for a product or service. If successful, they’ll get prospective...

As a landlord – or property manager or other housing provider – you may run background checks on prospective tenants. These reports can include rental and eviction history, credit history, criminal...

In the past few months, the FTC has announced case after case involving consumers’ sensitive health data, alleging violations of both Section 5 of the FTC Act and the FTC’s Health Breach Notification...

We usually don’t recommend reading other people’s mail, but even if you weren’t one of the approximately 130 companies that received a recent joint letter from the FTC and HHS’ Office for Civil Rights...

Ask people about the records they consider the most private and they may say personal health data. (If they misunderstand the question, they may mention disco singles they bought in junior high – but...

A common trope crossing the science fiction and mystery genres is a human detective paired with a robot. Think I, Robot , based on the novels of Isaac Asimov, or Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E. , a show-within-a...

Some secrets are so secret that no one knows about them. Until recently that described the secrets locked within our DNA. But a key to consumer confidence in the burgeoning genetic testing marketplace...

What you say in your home, what you do in your home. It doesn’t get more private than that. But, according to two recent FTC complaints, Amazon and Ring used this highly private data – voice...

Care About COPPA Compliance may not be the coolest Xbox gamertag, but an FTC action against Microsoft for alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule suggests it might be a...

“Stop it!” Moms and Dads may have to repeat that instruction to their kids, but when parents said it to Amazon in an effort to get the company to delete children’s voice data obtained through its...

Many consumers who use video doorbell and security cameras want to detect intruders invading the privacy of their homes. Consumers who installed Ring may be surprised to learn that according to a...

Educational technology hasn’t totally overtaken chalk dust and penmanship, but ed tech certainly has found its way into schools. A proposed settlement with Edmodo, LLC , alleges the ed tech company...

The Health Breach Notification Rule has been in place since 2009. Given the pace of innovation, that seems like a century in tech years. Since then, we’ve seen an explosion in the popularity of health...

As Emelia asked in Act V of Comedy of Errors , do “mine eyes deceive me?” Sorry to get all Shakespearean, but our eyes (and face, fingerprints, etc.) can reveal a lot of information about us – data...

Intimate facts about ovulation, fertility, and other sexual and reproductive health issues are about as personal as personal information can get. T he FTC alleges that Easy Healthcare Corporation –...

Is there a family, community, or company not impacted by the national student loan debt burden, which currently totals about $1.75 trillion? Even more distressing is that a substantial chunk of that...

You may have heard of simulation theory, the notion that nothing is real and we’re all part of a giant computer program. Let’s assume at least for the length of this blog post that this notion is...

If small business is the engine that powers the American economy, business-to-business transactions are the gears that keep it running. But just as an error on a credit report can throw an unexpected...

In the hierarchy of confidential data, health information ranks right up there. And in the hierarchy of health information, details about a person’s mental health may be among the most confidential...

Millions of people in the U.S. rent their home. Their landlord could be a small mom-and-pop property owner, a large property management company, a public housing agency, or some other kind of...