The wire services are reporting that the Supreme Court has denied certiorari in an appeal filed by IMS Health and Verispan. The companies were appealing a New Hampshire law that protects physicians’ prescription-writing data from data-mining companies that ana collect, analyze and sell that information to boost drug sales. The companies argued that the law…
Category: Business
Spy society: astonishing amount of personal data
Have you ever been tempted to try to find out what information about you is out there in databases? Matt Roper did just that, and sent out requests under the UK’s Data Protection Act to 46 organizations, requesting copies of all of his information. What he got back was a 2-foot high pile of records…
Who’s watching the watchers?
A silicon chip in your Viagra pack reports back to Pfizer on how much you took, and when. You fetch the last Coke from your chip-tagged fridge and your TV airs a Pepsi ad. Your phone company combs your trash for the chips you’ve cast off, selling the data it finds to marketers. And when…
Password-protected comments off limits to boss
In a time when chat rooms, social networking and online forums are commonplace, how far can a company go in monitoring them for negative comments from discontented employees before they are guilty of “cybersnooping”? A case decided last week, involving two servers at the Houston’s Restaurant in Hackensack, posed that question, and a federal jury…