Jeanne Price reports: One of the most memorable privacy stories of 2013 involved Aaron’s Rent-To-Own affiliates accused of spying on consumers who’d rented computers with secret software. While federal charges against Aaron’s Inc. were settled last year, that didn’t satisfy a pair of Colorado attorneys who were themselves clients of affiliate Aspen Way Enterprises in Fort Collins. Yesterday…
Category: Breaches
On Taxis and Rainbows: Lessons from NYC’s improperly anonymized taxi logs
Vijay Pandurangan writes: Recently, thanks to a Freedom of Information request, Chris Whong received and made public a complete dump of historical trip and fare logs from NYC taxis. It’s pretty incredible: there are over 20GB of uncompressed data comprising more than 173 million individual trips. Each trip record includes the pickup and dropoff location and time, anonymized hack licence…
Michigan woman files lawsuit against Iowa magazine publisher
Tom Gilchrist reports: A Huron County woman, represented by four attorneys, has filed a federal class-action lawsuit alleging an Iowa magazine publisher illegally shared personal information about her and other Michigan magazine subscribers, and demanding $5 million on the group’s behalf. Deborah Kinder alleges Des Moines-based Meredith Corp. — publisher of Better Homes and Gardens,…
Northern Ireland abuse inquiry breach exposes names of witnesses
As I’ve often said, sometimes just disclosing someone’s name in a context can be a serious problem for the individual. Here’s another case in point: The body investigating historical claims of abuse at Derry care homes for children has been forced to issue an apology – after an error led to a number of names of witnesses…