An air fryer, a ring, and a vacuum get brought into a home. What they take out is your data (Lock and Code S05E24)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… The month, a consumer rights group out of the UK posed a question to the public that they’d likely never considered: Were their air fryers spying on them? By analyzing the associated Android apps for three separate air fryer models from three different...

DNA data deserves better, with Suzanne Bernstein: Lock and Code S05E01

This week on the Lock and Code podcast… Hackers want to know everything about you: Your credit card number, your ID and passport info, and now, your DNA. On October 1 2023, on a hacking website called BreachForums, a group of cybercriminals claimed that they had stolen—and would soon...

TikTok's "secret operation" tracks you even if you don't use it

Consumer Reports CR, a US-based nonprofit consumer organization, has revealed that TikTok gathers data on people who don't even use the app itself. If this sounds familiar, it's because it's happened before. Meta's near-omnipresence wherever you are online enabled it to gather data on users, even...

My Body, My Data Act would lock down reproductive and sexual health data

A new bill entered into both the House of Representatives and the Senate proposes the strongest Federal data privacy protections yet for an increasingly scrutinized form of data in the United States—reproductive and sexual health data. The “My Body, My Data Act of 2022” was announced in early Jun...

Why adopt a data-centric solution for data privacy?

Enterprises understand the importance of having access to their consumers personal information. This data enables them to more easily build personal relationships with their audiences, using what they know about that audience to provide tailored experiences and recommendations. The internet has...

California’s Prop 24 splits data privacy supporters

California’s data privacy house is divided. On the Golden State’s November ballot this year is the question as to whether to amend California’s barely-two-year-old data privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act. Far from the first attempt to change the fledgling law, Proposition 24 sets...

National Consumer Protection Week

National Consumer Protection Week NCPW is March 1–7. This annual event encourages individuals and businesses to learn about their consumer rights and how to keep themselves secure. The Federal Trade Commission FTC and its NCPW partners provide free resources to protect consumers from fraud, scams...

Washington Privacy Act welcomed by corporate and nonprofit actors

The steady parade of US data privacy legislation continued last month in Washington with the introduction of an improved bill that would grant state residents the rights to access, control, delete, and port their data, as well as opting out of data sales. The bill, called the Washington Privacy...

California Adopts Strictest Privacy Law in U.S.

A landmark privacy rights bill took effect Jan. 1, 2020 in California and will have broad implications for U.S. consumers and businesses. The California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA mandates strict requirements for companies to notify users about how their user data will be used and monetized along...

Understanding CCPA: It's Time to Action a Plan for Compliance

Notice to all procrastinators: The final countdown to the California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA has begun. On January 1, 2020, companies or organizations that do business in California will be required to comply with the state's strict new privacy legislation that establishes a legal and enforceab...

Consumer DNA Testing Takes a Step Towards Privacy, Transparency

A group of well-known genetic testing providers have partnered with the Future of Privacy Forum FPF to establish privacy guidelines for handling information about what is arguably the most personal private information there is: DNA. Consumer-grade DNA testing – i.e., services that allow folks at...

National Consumer Protection Week

March 5–11 is National Consumer Protection Week NCPW, an event to encourage people and businesses to learn more about avoiding scams and understanding consumer rights. During NCPW, the Federal Trade Commission FTC and its fellow agencies highlight free resources to help protect against consumer...

President Proposes National Breach Notification Standard

Lacking precious detail, President Obama today proposed a national data breach notification standard, legislation that would mandate breached companies notify affected consumers inside of 30 days. The national law would supersede the current collection of state laws that govern notification...

Consumer Groups Urge FTC to Halt Facebook Data Collection Program

A collection of privacy and consumer groups from the United States and Europe has asked the Federal Trade Commission to force Facebook to suspend a recently installed program that mines information on sites that users’ visit around the Web in order to serve them interest-based ads. The groups say...

Security Experts, Internet Engineers Urge Lawmakers to Drop CISPA

A long list of security, networking and computer science experts have signed a letter sent to lawmakers on Monday, asking them to drop support for CISPA and other proposed cybersecurity bills because they consider the measures overly broad and say they would infringe on users’ privacy and civil...

White House Lays Out Privacy Agenda

The Obama administration today unveiled a new consumer-privacy plan designed to help better protect users’ rights online, including a privacy “bill of rights” that spells out exactly what consumers should expect from the companies they work with online. In conjunction with this new initiative,...

Two men charged for Hacking into AT&T Website !

Two men were arrested on Tuesday and are facing charges of fraud and conspiracy to access a computer without authorization, following an investigation that started with last year's much publicized harvesting of e-mails and AT&T authentication IDs of 114,000 early-adopters of Apple's iPad. Accordi...