Since the current US payment and financial system makes “things easy for fraudsters” Congress is considering a requirement that the US financial industry “adopt new card security measures used in other countries” as reported by Computerworld.  On March 5, 2013 members of the US House Financial Services Committee called…

Continue Reading Congress Considers Mandated Use of Chips & PINs to Fix Data Breaches

Mt. Gox shut down and a lawsuit was filed that alleges Mt. Gox and Mark Karpeles’ “catastrophic loss …uncovered a massive scheme to defraud millions of consumers into providing a private company with real, paper money in exchange for virtual currency.”  Computerworld reported that Mt. Gox and Mark Karpeles’ bankruptcy…

Continue Reading Bitcoin Update -Class Action Against Bankrupt Mt. Gox

I estimate that about 1% of Internet users bother to read Terms of Service, and only 0.01% of Internet users bother to read Click Agreements.  Of course the reason that no one reads Terms of Service or Click Agreements is that Internet users realize they cannot negotiate, so it’s really…

Continue Reading Is there Location Privacy under the new Apple iOS?

Each year IRS compiles a list of the “Dirty Dozen” “tax scams, reminding taxpayers to use caution during tax season to protect themselves against a wide range of schemes.”    IRS Commissioner John Koskinen added these comments:

Taxpayers should be on the lookout for tax scams using the IRS…

Continue Reading Identity Theft Tops the List for 2014 Tax Scams

“Acts of cyberwarfare –whereby a nation state launches cyberattacks against another country –are on the increase”…and “Cybercriminals are keen to learn new techniques that can make their own attacks more effective” are comments in Kaspersky’s Special Report entitled “Who is Spying on you?”

Among other threats in the…

Continue Reading Another Disturbing Report about Cyber Threats

German Chancellor Angela Merkel “has embraced proposals to create European data networks that would keep emails and other communications on the European side of the Atlantic, farther from prying American eyes” as reported in the New York Times.  Chancellor Merkel also stated that ‘that companies like Google and Facebook base…

Continue Reading EU Data ONLY in the EU? – A Boost to Data Localization Efforts

A brief was filed challenging a $20 million settlement that “authorizes Facebook to continue to use minors’ images for advertising without parental consent — in direct violation of the laws of seven states, including California, where Facebook is located.”  On February 13, 2014 on behalf of parents of teenagers, Public…

Continue Reading Parents Appeal Facebook’s Use of Pictures of Teenagers

“Cybercriminal gangs of the 21st century will target cloud-based applications and data repositories because that’s where the data is” as predicted in  McAfee® Labs’ 2014 Threat Predictions.  Cloud cyber vulnerability was stressed by McAfee:

  • This could be through business applications that have not been assessed by IT against corporate

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Continue Reading 2014 Cybersecurity Threats to Money & Data

“When a former employee uses a customer’s working log-in credentials to access his former employer’s scripts, are he and the customer hackers?” No ruled a federal court which denied that the defendants violated the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and California Computer Data Access And Fraud Act (CDAFA).…

Continue Reading Former Employee Had Valid Access, Not Guilty of Violating Federal & State Laws