Office supply store Staples may be joining the likes of Dairy Queen, Jimmy Johns and Home Depot as the latest national retailer to be hit with a cyberattack. [More]
Data & Privacy
Will You Avoid Data-Breached Retailers This Holiday Season?
By 10.20.14
The massive 2013 holiday data breach of Target, which siphoned off the personal and payment information for more than 100 million shoppers, provided an eye-opening moment for consumers who had previously assumed that this sort of ID theft mostly happened when shopping online. The Target debacle was followed by attacks on big-name businesses like Home Depot, Dairy Queen, P.F. Chang’s, Jimmy John’s, Kmart, and the Albertsons/Jewel-Osco/ACME, Shaw’s chains of supermarkets… twice. But will all these lapses in security actually drive shoppers elsewhere this holiday season? [More]
Facebook Adds New Safety Check Feature To Let Loved Ones Know You’re Okay After A Disaster
By 10.16.14
I’ll never forget the one time I’ve felt an earthquake in New York City. Not because it was anything scary — it was only a brief, jarring moment in an elevator — but because it seemed like every person I knew outside of the area was reaching out whether through text, phone call, email or social media to make sure I was okay (I was totally fine, but it was nice anyway). Facebook has a new feature called Safety Check that it says will make that whole process a lot easier. [More]
Anyone Over The Age Of 99 Has To Lie About Their Age To Join Facebook
By 10.15.14
A woman in Minnesota who turns 114 years old today (Happy birthday!) had to lie about her age recently. No, not because she wanted to appear younger, and not because she doesn’t want to admit she was born before every home had a telephone and flying hunks of metal called airplanes got people from here to there. She was trying to sign up for Facebook, which only allows for users 99 and younger. [More]
Kmart Announces Credit And Debit Card Breach That Began In September
By 10.10.14
Remember how this morning, we explained why it is inevitable that if you shop anywhere, your payment data or personal information will be part of a hack? On Friday evening, Kmart dropped the news that they have also been hacked, with malware installed in their in-store payment system. They have not yet announced how many customers have been affected. [More]
Do You Ever Shop Anywhere? Congratulations: Your Data Will Be Hacked
By 10.10.14
By the numbers alone, basically everyone in the country has been the victim of at least one data breach in the past year, if not more. 106 million Americans had their card data stolen from Target and Home Depot alone, to say nothing of the data breaches at Jimmy John’s, Dairy Queen, P.F. Chang’s, UPS, Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, ACME, Shaw’s, Sally Beauty Supply, Goodwill, some Marriott hotels, Neiman Marcus, and Michael’s craft stores. And that isn’t even considering other breaches that were too small to make national headlines, or that simply haven’t been discovered yet. [More]
Facebook Reportedly Planning An App Where Nobody Knows Your Name
By 10.8.14
At the moment where you might be suffering from Facebook fatigue — knowing that that girl from your biology class in high school has a craving for froyo gets exhausting — the social media company is reportedly planning a mobile app that’d be separate from Facebook, and would allow users to interact under pseudonyms. That way you’ll know when a stranger has a craving for froyo instead. Much more interesting. [More]
Facebook Wants To Be Your Source For Healthcare Info
By 10.3.14
Facebook is already a hotbed for your hypochondriac and conspiracy theorist friends to post poorly sourced or blatantly false medical information — like the bogus “Johns Hopkins Cancer Update” that pops up every few months — but the social network apparently wants to be more actively involved in the collecting and sharing of healthcare information to its users. [More]
Chase Data Breach Hit 76M Households, 7M Businesses; Account Info Not Stolen
By 10.2.14
Remember that coordinated hack attack against JPMorgan Chase and other banks from August? Chase now says information — but apparently no payment data — on some 76 million households and 7 million small businesses was compromised. [More]
Facebook’s New Ad Service Lets Advertisers Get Up Close And Personal Everywhere You Are
By 9.29.14
Facebook ads: we’ve all seen a million of them. While some are generic spam, many are very creepily on-target. Until now, Facebook has mostly used its massive hoard of detailed user data for itself, and to sell ads on its own site. But now the site you love to hate is finding a new way to bank on your favorite bands and brands, with a new advertising service that can let companies chase down and advertise to any specific group they want. [More]
Jimmy John’s Confirms Credit Card Data Breach At 216 Locations
By 9.24.14
Months after it was first reported that payment systems at sandwich chain Jimmy John’s may have been compromised, the company is finally confirming that 216 of its stores were indeed hacked, putting customers’ credit and debit card data at risk. [More]
Facebook Testing Self-Destructing Status Updates
By 9.11.14
Because your 493 Facebook friends likely won’t care in 50 years into the future (or honestly, 50 seconds from now) that you’re out grabbing fro-yo with your besties, Facebook is testing an option that would allow users to set a time limit on how long those updates appear on your timeline. [More]
If Facebook Is Going To Label Satirical Stories, It Should Be Calling Out Ads Posing As News Links
By 9.9.14
Facebook began labeling certain shared links as “satire,” as a bit of hand-holding for its less-savvy users who can’t tell the difference between an actual news headline and one written by the writers of The Onion. But what Facebook really needs to do is start labeling so-called “native” or sponsored stories on non-satire sites so that your idiot friends might think twice before sharing a story that is really just an ad for some juice company. [More]
OKCupid Co-Founder: You’re Trading Privacy For Free Use Of Facebook & Other Sites
By 9.9.14
We’re no fan of invasive advertising that tracks you across the Web in order to deliver you “targeted” ads that are allegedly more in line with your personal interests, and we get a bit queasy knowing that Facebook and other free sites are then selling your interest data to marketers. At the same time, we realize that free websites still need to make a buck. But where do you draw the line? [More]
Home Depot Already Being Sued Over Apparent Data Breach
By 9.5.14
As of right now, Home Depot has yet to confirm multiple reports that its in-store payment system was hacked, or given any indication how extensive the breach might be. But that hasn’t stopped people from suing the retailer. [More]
Facebook Mobile Users: Beware The Autoplay Videos Eating Up Your Data Plan
By 9.4.14
Perhaps you didn’t even mean to check out Maddie’s Amazing 3rd Birthday Party!!! footage on Facebook, maybe you were just scrolling along on your phone and stopped to read a post below that one. Nevertheless, if you haven’t turned the video autoplay feature off on your mobile devices, that sucker will start playing and could eat into your data allotment big time, as many users are finding out the rough way. [More]
Everyone Stop What You’re Doing And Freak Out: Facebook Appears To Be Down
By 9.3.14
UPDATE: Facebook appears to be back. Continue breathing. In the meantime, we’ve reached out to the company to see what could’ve possibly prompted such a brief, yet panicked outage, and will let you know when we hear back. [More]
IRS Turning Its Baleful Gaze At Company Cafeterias That Churn Out Free Food
By 9.2.14
Do you hear that noise? It’s thousands of forks clattering in the hands of Silicon Valley employees currently enjoying a free lunch. The Internal Revenue Service is taking a closer look at the trend of company cafeterias shoveling free food onto employees’ plates, saying that smorgasbord is a taxable fringe benefit. [More]
