Jeff Davis reports: Staples Business Depot received a slap on the wrist from the federal privacy commissioner Tuesday for failing to protect customers’ personal information. The business-supplies company was found to have been selling used data storage devices — such as computers, hard drives and USB sticks — without first wiping them clean of data….
Category: Featured News
NZ Post slammed over sharing personal data
Clio Francis and Shane Cowlishaw report: A New Zealand Post survey that collected personal data to rent out to marketing companies has been damned as a “systematic, large-scale breach” of privacy principles. The criticisms are made in two reports carried out for Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff after concerned members of the public contacted her about…
Does Anonymizing Data Help Protect Customers’ Privacy?
Klint Finley writes: Data collected from customers is routinely anonymized and then sold or otherwise disseminated for research purposes. But does anonymization work? One particularly high profile case was Netflix’s release of its customer data as part of its machine learning algorithm contest. According to Forbes’ firewall blog, researchers were able to de-anonymize some of this…
Judge Approves $2.4 Million Quantcast Privacy Settlement in Flash Cookies Lawsuit
Joe Mullin writes: So-called “Flash cookies” got some headlines in the online privacy world last year, after some prominent researchers noted that they were sometimes being used to track users—even users who took steps to protect their privacy, like clearing their regular (HTTP) cookies. Flash cookies were mentioned by the FTC as a problem, and…