More
on Equifax.
Equifax
security breach debacle thickens with improbable denials
… there’s no mention of whether the stolen
data is encrypted or not.
… The
credit-reporting service said late Thursday in a statement that it
discovered the intrusion on July 29. Regulatory filings
show that three days later,
Chief Financial Officer John Gamble sold shares worth $946,374 and
Joseph Loughran, president of U.S. information solutions, exercised
options to dispose of stock worth $584,099. Rodolfo Ploder,
president of workforce solutions, sold $250,458 of stock on Aug. 2.
None of the filings lists
the transactions as being part of 10b5-1 scheduled trading plans.
Melin
later reported on Equifax’s claim that none of the three —
the CFO, the president of U.S. information solutions, and president
of workforce solutions — knew about the breach when they sold their
stock:
The three “sold a small percentage of their Equifax shares,” Ines Gutzmer, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based company, said in an emailed statement. They “had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time.”
You can draw your own conclusions.
… The fact that the
breached entity (Equifax) is offering to sign consumers up for its
own identity protection services strikes me as pretty rich.
(Related).
Business should never be about, “What can we get away with?”
Equifax has changed its terms of service to note
that users checking to see if they've been affected by a massive
breach it endured are not waiving their right to file a class action
lawsuit.
Prior to the update, users on social media pointed
out that individuals using Equifax's tool to see if their
information was compromised in a massive data breach could be giving
up their rights to file or join a lawsuit against the company.
This suggests to me that they will move to
machines that have not been “White Hat Tested.”
The Virginia State Board of Elections moved Friday
to do away with touchscreen voting machines in the state by
November’s election, a move aimed at boosting security.
The board decided to phase out the machines this
year after the Virginia Department of Elections recommended that the
touchscreen voting machines be decertified. The recommendation came
after security experts breached numerous types of voting machines
with ease at the DEF CON cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas in
July, according to The
Richmond Times-Dispatch.
The move comes amid heightened concerns over
foreign interference in future elections, in light of the U.S.
intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia used cyberattacks
and disinformation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Virginia’s gubernatorial election will take
place in November, meaning that the move to get rid of the machines
would result in 22 localities having to replace their equipment less
than two months before the vote.
Like a tax haven for patents. I like it!
The drugmaker Allergan announced Friday that it
had transferred its patents on a best-selling eye drug to the Saint
Regis Mohawk Tribe in upstate New York — an unusual gambit to
protect the drug from a patent dispute.
Under the
deal, which involves the dry-eye drug Restasis, Allergan will pay
the tribe $13.75 million. In exchange, the tribe will claim
sovereign immunity as grounds to dismiss a patent challenge through a
unit of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The tribe
will lease the patents back to Allergan, and will receive $15 million
in annual royalties as long as the patents remain valid.
… Mr. White said the tribe was approached in
April by a Dallas law firm, Shore
Chan DePumpo, which proposed the idea. The
tribe has already taken ownership of patents owned by a technology
company that Mr. White declined to name, but said the
Allergan arrangement is the tribe’s first pharmaceutical deal.
Perspective. Banks are finally getting into the
Mobile Banking business! (Perhaps it should be called ‘Banking as
a Service?”
Zelle, a
payment network backed by major US banks, is launching a standalone
app
Zelle,
a new payment service backed by more than 30 US banks, will launch
its standalone app on September 12th to take on competitors like
Venmo and Square Cash. The network had been quietly powering money
transfers for major US banks including Bank of America, Chase, Wells
Fargo, and Citibank since
launching in June.
While the Zelle app won’t
have social components like a share feed, comments, or a Like button,
the company says it’s targeted toward users who value instantaneous
transactions. Since the network works directly with banking
partners, money can be
transferred between accounts — regardless of bank affiliations —
for free, and can be withdrawn in minutes. In comparison,
Venmo balances need to be “cashed out,” and it can take at least
24 hours until that money is available in your bank account. Venmo
parent company PayPal recently offered instant withdrawal for 25
cents per transaction, but has yet to roll out a similar feature
on Venmo.
To use the Zelle app, customers have to sign up
for a Zelle account then link their bank information. Users can send
money using a contact’s email address or phone number, but the
recipient must also sign up for a Zelle account to complete the
transaction. You can avoid all of this by continuing to use your
bank’s own app which is likely already powered by Zelle, but it’s
an option for someone who wants a single-purpose app for quickly
transferring money.
Is it still “too good to be true?”
With
the number of video streaming services increasing all the time, it’s
tempting to assume the death
of cinema is nigh. After all, why would you pay $10 for one film
when you can enjoy a whole month of Netflix for less?
Perhaps I’m being facetious. Going to the movie
theater is still an enjoyable activity. However, it’s hard to deny
that with progressively larger TV screens, better picture quality,
and improvements in speaker systems, the difference between watching
at home and heading to the cinema is narrowing.
One company — MoviePass — is trying to reverse
the trend and inject new life into the theater-going experience. But
what is MoviePass? How does it work? And how can it save you money?
Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about using
MoviePass.
I think my student know of many more sites like
these, but this is a start.
Ah, schadenfreude! So universal is our tendency
to laugh at the misfortune of others that the Germans invented a term
for it. Not to be left behind, the internet coined its own term:
“Fail.” Let’s witness the best (or worst?) of these.
Well, let’s be clear, this isn’t the
worst of the web. Fails are all about genuine attempts that went
horribly wrong. Fails encompass everything from unintentional
slapstick to hilarious arguments. And they don’t discriminate
between sites, whether you are Facebook, Google Maps, or something
else.
An obvious downside of Artificial Intelligence.
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