Sunday, February 02, 2014

As breaches get larger, the impact gets broader. If this only happened to ½ of 1 percent of the people, that's 550,000 times! (110,000,000 victims times .005)
Target data breach could affect real estate transactions
… Among the scenarios that could begin surfacing as the stolen information from retailers is sold and used in the coming months:
•Home sales could be knocked off track by the sudden appearance of new debts on buyers' credit reports. Many lenders now monitor national credit bureau files electronically from the date of loan approval to moments before closing. Even if you explain that you were a victim of identity theft, your financing could be put on ice until you and the bureaus clean up your reports. That could cause you to miss contractual deadlines with the home seller and, worst case, cause you to lose the house.
•Undetected run-ups of balances on credit cards could seriously affect "utilization ratios" — how much of the available credit maximum a consumer has drawn down — and cause declines in scores. High rates of utilization or "maxing out" are penalized by the major scoring models. Lower credit scores, in turn, may disqualify you for a mortgage, at least until you are able to document to the credit bureaus' satisfaction that the new debts were the result of identity theft.
•Undetected use of your information to create one or more new credit cards could be especially damaging and time consuming to fix. Clemans notes that although merchants and the bureaus may be eager to help resolve identity theft situations, they are also on guard against attempts by consumers to blame everything negative in their files on identity theft. They'll want proof and documentation before expunging the bad information.


“More to the point, we were lying about how the scanners were used. What do you suppose we're lying about now?”
Former TSA employee Jason Edward Harrington has written an article confirming many American’s worst fears about how we have been viewed and mocked by TSA employees. Here’s a snippet:
Most of my co-workers found humor in the I.O. room on a cruder level. Just as the long-suffering American public waiting on those security lines suspected, jokes about the passengers ran rampant among my TSA colleagues:
… All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels.
Read his article on Politico.
Not surprisingly, TSA has pushed back against the article, claiming it’s inaccurate and outdated.


Oh look! The FTC has settled ¼ of 3/10ths of 9/92nds of a percent of yesterday's breaches! Not bad for a government agency.


I doubt congress is getting serious, perhaps this was for Data Privacy Day?
There’s a new report by Kristin Finklea, Specialist in Domestic Security, for the Congressional Research Service.
You can access the full report on FAS.


Learn to program.
– Go is an open source programming language designed for building simple, fast, and reliable software. Go by Example is a hands-on introduction to Go using annotated example programs, one of which is the famous “Hello World” program. The site also provides a list of numerous other programs to browse through and try out.


For my Website students.
– Create your frontend code simply and quickly with Bootstrap using LayOutIt’s Drag & Drop Interface Builder. High quality HTML5 is made using the Interface Builder. Drag-and-drop the Bootstrap components to your own design. It’s easy to integrate with any programming language – just download the HTML and start coding the design into it. Professional and validated HTML which you can replace with your own variables.


Dilbert combines Jeff Bezos, pizza, and infinite math. What could be better?

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