Should
non-customers (ex-customers, potential customers, etc.) be treated
the same as customers? Same database, same security, etc?
Earlier
this month, health insurer Anthem was
hit by a massive hack. Now, it's admitted that between 8.8
million and 18.8 million people who are not its customers could
also be victims in the attack.
…
It's the non-Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield customers that are
potentially affected because "their records may be included in
the database that was hacked," the
company told Reuters. Up to this point, Anthem hadn't admitted
that the effects of the recent hack spread any wider than its direct
members.
…
Anthem has also updated the total of its own customers affected by
the hack to 78.8 million customers—down, ever so slightly, from the
estimated 80 million. In
total, with non-customers included, the tally of those
affected could reach as high as 98.6
million. Uncertainty in the total is because 14 million of
the records are incomplete, making it difficult for Anthem to link
all of its members to the correct plans.
(Related)
Joseph
Conn reports:
The potential legal liabilities from the unprecedented
breach of some 80 million individuals’ records at
Indianapolis-based insurance giant Anthem
could entangle nearly 60
health insurance plans from Hawaii to Puerto Rico, legal
experts say. More than 50 class-action lawsuits related to the
breach already have been filed in less than a month.
The plans could find themselves held legally responsible for the
breach under the federal Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy and security
law as well as state laws. They likely also face a rising number of
private civil suits, according to legal experts.
Read
more on Modern
Healthcare.
(Related)
Let me guess. North Korea?
Cory
Bennett reports:
The FBI is close to naming the cyberattacker behind the Anthem data
breach. Whether it tells the public, though, remains to be seen.
“We’re close already,” said Robert Anderson, who leads the
FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, during a
Tuesday roundtable with reporters. “But we’re not going to say
it until we’re absolutely sure.”
Read
more on The
Hill.
Does
this have implications for Anthem or is LinkedIn not as valuable as
your complete medical history? (Article 4)
LinkedIn
Pays Out $1 for Leaked Passwords
If
you were a premium user of LinkedIn
between March 2006 and June 2012 then the company owes you around $1.
This is due to the settlement of a class-action lawsuit over the
publication of LinkedIn passwords in 2012.
According
to Ars
Technica, an aggrieved premium user by the name of Katie Szpyrka
sued LinkedIn alleging it was negligent over the leak, amongst other
things. The court agreed, and LinkedIn has set up a fund worth $1.25
million to pay the costs and compensate the plaintiffs.
Unfortunately,
800,000 premium users qualify for compensation, so after the lawyers
take their cut, each one will receive around $1. The company
“continues to deny that it committed, or threatened, or
attempted to commit any wrongful act or violation of law or duty
alleged in the Action.” However, LinkedIn has promised to
hash and salt all user passwords from now on.
Why
now? Was this never considered when the company was started?
Seth
Fiegerman reports:
Better late than never.
Reddit,
the popular social news service, issued new digital
privacy guidelines on Tuesday firmly prohibiting
sexually explicit images posted without
the user’s position. [Still
Okay for “escort services” to advertise? Bob]
“No matter who you are, if a photograph, video, or digital image of
you in a state of nudity, sexual excitement, or engaged in any act of
sexual conduct, is posted or linked to on Reddit without your
permission, it is prohibited,” the company’s top executives wrote
in a post. “We also recognize that violent personalized images are
a form of harassment that we do not tolerate and we will remove them
when notified.”
Read
more on Mashable.
(Related)
Again, why now?
Google
Announces Steps to Clean Up Blogger
I'm
going to go farther and say that paying the ransom suggests that you
had lousy security, inadequate backup procedures and really, really
bad management.
In
response to a recent news story out of Midlothian (noted here),
an editorial in The Journal Times reminds law enforcement
that they should take their own advice and not pay ransom to hackers
who lock up police files.
As
the editors note, the Midlothian incident is not the first time law
enforcement has paid ransom:
Last November, the Dickson County Sheriff’s Department in Tennessee
paid out $572 when the same virus infected its computers. The
sheriff there said his first reaction was “we are not going to be
held hostage. But, he said, “once it was determined which records
were involved and that they were crucial to victims of crimes in this
county, and to the operations of the sheriff’s office and the
citizens of this county … I had no choice but to authorize to pay
this.”
I
don’t recall ever seeing that case, but I do recall the one in
Detroit
earlier
last year. In that case, the city didn’t pay the demand for
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As
the editors note:
Paying ransom, even cheap ransom, is never a good policy, and it’s
particularly unseemly when a police agency is held up.
Read
more on The
Journal Times.
We’ll
probably never know how often entities pay ransom and just quietly go
about their business if they’re lucky enough to get the promised
decryption key, but the editors have a point: this should not be one
of those “Do as we say, not as we do” situations.
...because
not all high school students are criminals? What a concept!
I
just love to see students stand up for their rights!
Olivia
Carville reports:
In a precedent-setting decision, two Toronto high school students
took their principal to court and won the battle against mandatory
breath testing at prom.
The Northern Secondary School students petitioned the court after
their principal, Ron Felsen, demanded compulsory breathalyzer tests
at last year’s prom.
The Superior Court ruled in the students’ favour on Monday, stating
mandatory breath testing would infringe on their constitutional
rights.
Read
more on Toronto
Star.
(Related)
Did they ask lawyers or parents or students? Why pay so much for an
easily created App?
Genevieve
Bookwalter reports:
Lake Forest teachers soon will have a cell phone app that operates
like a panic button, letting them alert police and administrators and
track students in case of a school shooting or other emergency.
At a school board meeting Monday night, members of the District 67
board of education, which governs Lake Forest’s elementary schools,
unanimously approved buying CrisisGo, based in Marion, Ill., for
teachers and administrators to use in crises. Along with notifying
authorities, the app also would hold a copy of schools’ emergency
response manuals.
“It’s really the next best practice in school safety,” said
Lauren Fagel, assistant superintendent of curriculum, instruction,
technology and assessment for districts 67 and 115. District 115
governs Lake Forest High School.
[…]
But before approving the purchase, district
leaders did voice concerns about students’ privacy. In the end,
they felt increased safety was worth the trade-off.
Read
more on Chicago
Tribune.
[From
the article:
…
Along with serving as something of a panic button, CrisisGo would
tap Lake Forest's attendance software to let administrators know
which students are in what classrooms and who stayed home sick,
according to company officials. [Could
this be used to target specific students or teachers? Bob]
…
The app is expected to cost $.90 per student, or about $4,000 per
year.
I
think it's a bad idea. If they aren't talking in public, how will we
be able to mock them in public? (See how easily I can ridicule Rep.
Poe?)
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/233660-gop-lawmaker-isis-shouldnt-have-access-to-twitter
Rep.
Ted Poe (R-Texas) on Tuesday suggested that terrorist groups like the
Islamic State should be barred from using social media sites like
Twitter to spread their message.
Poe
cited recent examples of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS,
posting videos of murdered prisoners on Twitter. The Texas
Republican argued that the American-owned company is essentially
giving terrorist groups a free platform to reach millions of people.
For
my Data Management and Business Intelligence students to explore.
25
Social Media Channels You’re Probably Not Using Now
…
Check out our list of social media channels you’re probably not
using and see if any have potential for your business.
(Related)
Identify
Your Target Audience on Instagram with SharkReach
(Related)
Also worth a read.
7
Reasons Snapchat is a Teenager’s Favourite Social Network
(Related)
How Analytics can be used to benefit (and locate?) customers.
Analytics
in E Major
(Ditto)
How
to Build Your Own Search Engine
This
evening I hosted a webinar for a school district in Florida. One of
the many topics that we covered was building a custom search engine
for elementary school students to use. If you have ever wanted to
build your own search engine, the directions contained in the slides
and videos below will get you started on the right path.
If
you would like a copy of these slides open the slide editor then
select "file, make a copy." You will have to be logged
into your Google Account to make the copy.
This
might be useful in a few of my classes.
The
Handy Guide to Social Media Keyboard Shortcuts
Do
you use social media, either for fun or work? Would you like to make
your social media experience more enjoyable and efficient? As with
anything, mastering keyboard
shortcuts can be a great way to achieve that goal. But every
social
media site has it’s own set of keyboard
shortcuts; how are you to remember them all?
The
answer is simple: check out the this cheat sheet below, as it breaks
down the most useful shortcuts for every big player in social media.
Save it, print it, and use it to help turn you into a social media
guru.
Via
SetUpABlogToday
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