As reported in The New York Times today, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) expanded the types of companies required to obtain parental permission before knowingly collecting personally identifiable information of children. At issue was the fact that the Children’s Online Protection Privacy Act of 1998 (or “COPPA”) had not identified mobile app developers as a […]
The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) recently released a staff report entitled, Mobile Apps for Kids: Disclosures Still Not Making the Grade, where the regulatory agency cites a lack of progress in the Mobile App industry for failing to adequately inform parents and guardians about how their child-derived information is collected, shared, and accessed. FTC Chairman, Mr. Jon Leibowitz, stated […]
Sunday after the Thanksgiving Holiday, I was perusing through my Facebook account, and noticed a friend had posted something on her Wall regarding copyrighted material. Early the next day, I received a phone call/e-mail from another friend asking me what I thought about the Facebook copyright notice, and whether he should copy/paste it to his Wall. After […]
The U.S. government’s top information technology provider, Lockheed Martin, Corp., cited on Monday the dramatic increase in cyber-attacks against its IT infrastructure. A majority of the “advanced persistent threats” (APTs) were either generated from organized groups or state-sponsored actors, but Lockheed failed to name any specific countries or groups. According to Lockheed, the cyber-attacks are targeting the defense […]
“An academic institution shall not request or require that a student or applicant disclose any password or other related account information in order to gain access to the student’s or applicant’s social networking site profile or account by way of an electronic communication device.” In July, 2012, the governor of Delaware signed a legislative bill […]
The New York Times reported that login credentials of a Dropbox employee were stolen from an unrelated hacking incident, and led to a spam attack within its own network. The incident occurred when hacker’s used a stolen password to log into the Dropbox employee’s account that had content which contained Dropbox user information. From that point, the hacker’s launched a spam attack […]
The Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, co-chaired by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-TX), have sent letters of inquiry to nine leading industry data brokers, like Acxiom, Epsilon, Experian, and Equifax. The purpose of the letters is to determine if stricter regulations are needed for companies who rarely interact with consumers on […]
Mr. Adam Liptak, reporter for The New York Times, recently wrote a compelling article on the unparalleled amount of warrant requests used by law enforcement agencies through the judicial system. For the most part, the American public is unaware that in 2011, cellphone carriers were hit with approximately 1.3 million requests for subscriber information, which for […]
Negotiations in the ongoing debate over how internet service companies, like Facebook, Inc., and Google, Inc., will be able to use personal information to track the browsing habits of its patrons have apparently hit a stalemate. Unless mediators between the Obama Administration, privacy advocate groups, and Internet industry firms can come to some sort of amiable […]
A lawsuit was filed in San Jose, CA, on June 15, 2012, seeking class action status against LinkedIn, Corp., stemming from the recent data breach of user passwords that ended up on a Russian Internet forum. The lawsuit filed by a Chicago-based attorney, Ms. Katie Szpyrka, accuses LinkedIn of deceiving its customers and for failing to implement […]