Every once in a while, we get one of those “I coulda had a V8” items in the news. The recently announced Lending Tree breach appears to be one of those. From the reports, Lending Tree files were breached, and full credit files were sold to both other mortgage lenders, and to criminals.
These [...]

Filed under: Identification, Privacy, Provisioning, Security | No Comments »

I was having a rant with a colleague the other day about privacy and anonymity. It started with a comment that the Aussies were in a tizzy because the government was going to make it legal for businesses to monitor employee’s email. I was reminding my friend (who didn’t need reminding) that it’s [...]

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This just in… your identity is worth around $3. That’s according to the latest in the TJX saga. TJX, the owner of TJ Maxx and Marshalls (among other stores), has had what many believe to be the largest (reported) consumer data theft in history. The theft of at least 46 million (with [...]

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So, who owns your identity? The naive among us might suppose that the individual is entitled to his identity, and that he owns it. If so, you’d get a lot of disagreement from the organizations. Doctors say they own the medical records, because they created it - literally wrote it in a file folder. Credit Reporting agencies will tell you that they own your credit file. The government will tell you they own your drivers license and passport — they just let you use them, and can demand their return at any time.

Filed under: Identification, Privacy | 1 Comment »

The news this week has included several articles (AFP feed linked here) noting that the German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble’s fingerprints were published, along with a “how to” article on creating a fake set of fingerprints. The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) allegedly collected the fingerprints from a water glass. The CCC published the [...]

Filed under: Biometrics, Identification, Privacy, Security | No Comments »