Consumerist
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damn, t-mobile
Yesterday's T-Mobile Outage Affected 2 Million Users
Boy, T-Mo is on a roll lately. First they gave Perez Hilton fits by losing his Sidekick info, then, presumably in a misguided attempt to make up for it, they began showing boobs to one of our readers (they are still investigating), and now as an encore — a massive outage. More » -
fail
State Job Website Has Great Opportunities For Self-Starting Identity Thieves
CBS 5 exposed a "gaping hole" in the code of California's state-run employment website that allows anyone who views the site to access and modify other users' resumes and personal info simply by changing some numbers in the URL. More » -
good news
T-Mobile Posts Instructions On How To Restore Sidekick Data
If you've been waiting impatiently to get your data back on your Sidekick, here's your opportunity. IntoMobile reports that T-Mobile has posted data retrieval instructions on its website. They note that most but not necessarily all contacts should be there, but if you're one of the unlucky few who lost all of your data, T-Mobile has a shiny $100 gift card for you.
"T-Mobile posts Sidekick contacts recovery instructions!" [IntoMobile]
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t-mobile
First Sidekick Data Outage Lawsuits Filed
After T-Mobile Sidekick users lost data access for the better part of a week, then lost the information stored on their phones, it should surprise no one that the lawsuits are already flying. Though it is surprising that none of them were filed by Perez Hilton. More » -
compensation
Maine's Supreme Court To Decide If Consumers Should Be Compensated For Hannaford Security Breach
If a retailer doesn't protect your credit card data and it gets stolen, should you be compensated? Not for any unauthorized charges, which are already covered under banks' zero-liability protection, but for the time lost dealing with the problem, for the anxiety it causes, and for any future credit history/score issues it might cause? More » -
t-mobile
T-Mobile Sidekick Data Outage: Day Three
We've been receiving mail from outraged T-Mobile Sidekick users all weekend, reporting nationwide data outages since Friday. For many users, this includes lack of access to not just e-mail and IM, but also address books unless saved to the SIM. More » -
lax security
Doctors Across Tennessee Keep Faxing Patient Records To A Solar Panel Company
For three years now, reports The Tennessean, the owner of a solar panel company in Indiana says "confidential medical faxes" have been sent to him by doctors throughout Tennessee. His fax number is apparently very similar to the one for the Tennessee Department of Human Services, but although he's contacted the errant doctors' offices, as well as reported it to the DHS and to the state's governor's office, they keep coming. More » -
how to
Get Your Data Out Of Google
If you're like the average Google user, you've now got a lot of personal data—emails, addresses, calendars, documents, photos and videos, maybe even health records—in their system. This is fine with them, because the Google Hive Mind needs all of this data to eventually become self aware and enslave us. However, if you ever want to get that information out of Google, the company has created something they call the Data Liberation Front to make it easier for you. More » -
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identity theft
Grab Your Old Statements, We're Going To The Shred-A-Thon!
Tucson, Arizona is hosting a community shred-a-thon in October, where private citizens can show up with boxes of sensitive data and have it shredded for free. Back in July, the Wall Street Journal looked at the growing trend of community shredding events as an example of how regular people are taking action to prevent identity theft. More » -
graphs
What Bills Are In Circulation The Most?
Visual Economics has a fun chart that shows how many of each denomination of U.S. currency is in circulation, as well as their average lifespans. For some reason, the $5 bill has the shortest lifespan. Also, seriously, we need to stop producing pennies NOW.
"The Value of United States Currency in Circulation" [Visual Economics]
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refunds
Is Verizon Randomly Charging You $1.99 Per Line For "Data Usage"?
On August 14, the Cleveland Plain Dealer printed a column by a business writer who described her 6-month-long ordeal with Verizon concerning a mysterious $1.99 charge for "data usage." The paper says that over 400 Plain Dealer readers responded with complaints similar to the one in the column. Now the paper says they have a promise from Verizon to refund these mysterious and erroneous charges. More » -
negligence
Ameriprise Website Riddled With Security Vulnerabilities For At Least Five Months
[Note: The original headline for this post mistakenly identified Ameritrade as the subject of the post. It is actually Ameriprise Financial. I deeply regret the error.] Since March of this year, security expert Russ McRee of HolisticInfoSec.org has sent 6 messages to Ameriprise Financial warning them of easily exploitable security holes on their website. They ignored every request, while at the same time reassuring customers that "No one without the proper web browser configuration can view or modify information contained on our systems." More » -
satire
Google Invites Privacy-Concerned Users To Move To Remote Village
The Onion reports that Google's new privacy policy requires users who wish to opt out to relocate to a remote ghetto and abandon all contact with the outside world. (Photo: kalle svensson) -
tiny fiddles
Hacked Company: Notifying Customers Of Breach Is A "Burden"
Network Solutions, an e-commerce company, just experienced a data breach that resulted in them compromising 573,000 credit and debit card accounts. The company has begun to notify merchants of the breach so they can tell their customers, but gosh, it's just so hard. More » -
privacy
Marketers Announce They Will Bring More Transparency To Personal Data Collection By 2010
Several major advertising trade groups announced yesterday that starting in 2010, they will implement a new set of self-imposed guidelines on how they collect and use your personal info, in an attempt to prevent the government from handing down federal regulations. More » -
security gaps
American Express Keeps Emailing Sensitive Customer Info To A Random Stranger
We're starting to think Amex doesn't take this whole "data security" thing very seriously. First they confused a customer, and us, a few months ago with their random confirmation phone call, where they demanded a customer turn over bank account information over the phone without giving him a way to verify they were really Amex. Now a reader says the company has "for years" been sending him someone else's account info via email, including the customer's name and the last 5 digits of his account number. J.R. writes, "Seriously, I've seen better security on a video game forum." More » -
spyware
Sears Settles With FTC Over Spyware Charge
In 2007 and 2008, Sears invited select customers to join the exclusive "My SHC Community," which involved installing an app that would monitor online browsing in exchange for $10. The app was called spyware by researchers and the FTC, because the data it collected on customers included "details from their online shopping, bank statements, drug-prescription records, video rentals, library-borrowing histories, even the names and addresses of their e-mail correspondents," as well as "data about the users' computers, printers, and other devices." More » -
public records
Erroneous Public Records Data, Or: Who The Heck Is This Hipolito Guy?
Kathy has an unusual problem. She thinks that there might be a problem with some of her public records and/or her credit report, but she isn't sure how to find out how it got there, let alone remove it. See, there's a man named Hipolito, with the same relatively common last name as Kathy, who keeps popping up in public records questions used to verify her identity. She has no idea who this man is, and neither does anyone in her family. More »
data
New York, 5:23 AM
Mon Nov 9
6 posts in the last 24 hours
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