Lew Sichelman reports: That pizza you had delivered the other night could mean the difference between whether you are approved for a mortgage or rejected. There’s a big stretch between making a house payment and paying for a pizza. But it’s not what you pay for carryout that matters, at least not in the eyes…
Category: Misc
Ohio collects millions selling driving records with your personal information
Joe Guillen reports: The state of Ohio has collected millions of dollars selling records with your name, address, driver’s license number and other personal information so it can be used in all sorts of ways, from crafting insurance policies to screening job candidates. Since 2005, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles has sold more than 1.39…
Myths and Fallacies of “Personally Identifiable Information”
Arvind Narayanan writes: I have a new paper (PDF) with Vitaly Shmatikov in the June issue of the Communications of the ACM. We talk about the technical and legal meanings of “personally identifiable information” (PII) and argue that the term means next to nothing and must be greatly de-emphasized, if not abandoned, in order to…
Tweaking Contract Law for Confidentiality Agreements (updated)
Another interesting blog post over on Concurring Opinions today, this one by Lawrence Cunningham: Can you keep a secret? If you promise to, law generally will hold you to it, even over protests that your First Amendment rights say otherwise. The famous golf pro, Tiger Woods, is reportedly asking his wife for such an ironclad…