A little more than one month after the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to extend new data privacy rights to its people, the governor of California signed a separate, sweeping data protection law that borrowed several ideas from GDPR, sparking a torch in a legislative data privacy trend that has now spanned at least 10 countries. In Chile, lawmakers are … [Read more...]
April 1, 2020
March 6, 2020
Bring your own privacy: VPNs for consumers and orgs
VPNs (virtual private networks) have been popular for quite some time now, and they’re worth a huge amount of money for the companies working in this area. They’re also at the forefront of combating potential repression and censorship around the world. It might all sound a bit esoteric and unrelated to your general day-to-day requirements, but VPNs are absolutely a mainstream topic whether at home … [Read more...]
February 13, 2020
Cyber tips for safe online dating: How to avoid privacy gaffs, exploits, and scams
Research and reporting on this article were conducted by Labs writers Chris Boyd and David Ruiz. Dating apps have been mainstream for a long time now, with nearly every possible dating scene covered—casual, long-term, gay, poly, of the Jewish faith, interested only in farmers—whatever you’re looking for. Sadly, wherever you find people trying to go about their business, you’ll also … [Read more...]
February 7, 2020
Google Maps: online interventions with offline ramifications
The places where online life directly intersection with that lived offline will be forever fascinating, illustrated perfectly through a recent performance piece involving Google Maps, a cart, and an awful lot of mobile phones. Simon Weckert, an artist based in Berlin, Germany, showed how a little ingenuity could work magic on the ubiquitous Google Maps system. Turns out Google hadn’t accounted for … [Read more...]
February 5, 2020
Protect Office 365 with Security Gateway for Email
At about this time last year, Office 365 had around 155 million users, and businesses continue to adopt its services at a rate of around 3 million users per month. But as subscription rates continue to grow, it becomes a growing target for cybercriminals to spread phishing and ransomware attacks. A big drawback of such a large hosted service is that if cybercriminals manage to take over one of its … [Read more...]
February 4, 2020
Washington Privacy Act welcomed by corporate and nonprofit actors
The steady parade of US data privacy legislation continued last month in Washington with the introduction of an improved bill that would grant state residents the rights to access, control, delete, and port their data, as well as opting out of data sales. The bill, called the Washington Privacy Act, also improves upon its earlier 2019 version, providing stronger safeguards on the use of facial … [Read more...]
December 23, 2019
Online privacy in 2019: a legislative review
For decades, the United States treated data privacy like an aging home, patching individual leaks and drafts only when a new storm hit. The country passed a law protecting healthcare-related information, and not much else. It then passed a law protecting video rental information, and not much else. It continued this way, repeatedly passing sector-specific laws while failing to address a problem … [Read more...]
December 17, 2019
New Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act (COPRA) would empower American users
Despite the already dizzying number of comprehensive data privacy proposals before the US Senate—nearly 10 have been introduced since mid-2018—yet another bill has entered the conversation: the Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act. This time, the bill, called COPRA for short, is sponsored by a Democratic Senator from Washington whose name has rarely been cited in the country’s ongoing debate as … [Read more...]
November 26, 2019
Would ‘Medicare for All’ help secure health data?
DISCLAIMER: This post is not partisan, but rather focuses on risk assessment based on history and what threats we are facing in the future. We do not endorse any healthcare plan style in any way, outside of examining its data security risk. For many folks, the term ‘Healthcare for All’ brings up an array of emotions ranging from concern to happiness, and with the changes that come with this … [Read more...]
November 25, 2019
“Data as property” promises fix for privacy problems, but could deepen inequality
In mid-November, Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang unveiled a four-prong policy approach to solving some of today’s thornier tech issues, such as widespread misinformation, technology dependence, and data privacy. Americans, Yang proposed, should receive certain, guaranteed protections for how their data is collected, shared, and sold—and if they choose to waive those rights, they should … [Read more...]
