The Waterkooler

RECENT STORIES (More Privacy News Stories Here and Here)

Who's minding the store (of private data you gave up)?

I accidentally downloaded your identity from the IRS

ID Theft: How Bad Is It?

The Enterprise Strategy Group recently surveyed 229 U.S.- based security professionals from organizations with more than 1,000 employees. The majority of respondents (52 percent) came from organizations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

23 percent of respondents reported their organization had suffered an internal security breach in the past 12 months, while 27 percent didn't know if it had or not. Note to self: Make sure the people you do business with know whether they've been hacked or not.

Regarding the damage caused by these internal security events, 40 percent of respondents said that an internal breach led to an interruption of a critical system or service, 38 percent indicated that an internal breach led to data corruption or loss, and 17 percent said that the internal breach led to the theft of intellectual property.

Are you ready to cut up your credit cards yet? It gets worse.

Google's Growth Prompts Privacy Concerns.

"Google is at once a powerful search engine and a growing e-mail provider. It runs a blogging service, makes software to speed Web traffic and has ambitions to become a digital library. And it is developing a payments service.

Although many Internet users eagerly await each new technology from Google Inc., its rapid expansion is also prompting concerns that the company may know too much: what you read, where you surf and travel, whom you write."

Hackers Up the Pressure in June

"A massive run-up in the number of Trojan horses and Trojan horse downloaders, as well as a corresponding jump in the number of malicious sites, over the last three weeks means that a new, large-scale, coordinated phishing campaign is being waged by criminals, a security vendor said Friday.

Websense, a San Diego-based security company, has detected a "four- to five-fold increase in the number of Trojans during the last week of June and especially the first two weeks of July," said Dan Hubbard, Websense's senior director of security."

A Pass on Privacy?
You may love your EZ Pass - that electronic encoder that allows you to zip through toll booths - but now that you have given up a piece of your personal information to yet another database, what vulnerabilites have you exposed yourself to?

Choicepoint Loses 145,000 US Identities
Bank of America Loses 2.1 million gov employee records
Seisint Reports Familiar Story: Hackers Stole 32,000 US Identities

So what is the Senate going to do about it?

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Learn How to Protect Your Privacy Here.

No Place To Hide, a radio documentary, asks the question, "Has technology outpaced our ability to protect ourselves?

Fight for your Right to Privacy:

Electronic Privacy Information Center
Washington National Office
1718 Connecticut Ave. N.W.
Suite 200
Washington, DC 20009
tel: 202 483 1140

Privacy International

FTC Initiatives

Privacy Rights Now

Privacy Rights.org