What the data broker industry is doing with your personal information — new privacy laws, enforcement actions, breaches, and plain-language explainers, as well as online privacy tips.
Online Safety
If you've been hacked, the order you do things in matters more than speed. Get your email back before your bank. Change passwords from a device you trust rather than the one that might be infected, then lock your credit before anyone can use what they took. The steps below follow that order.
Why is there no federal privacy law in the US? Two specific disputes, over who preempts whom and who gets to sue, have killed every serious bill, and the groups that benefit from the stalemate spend heavily to keep them unresolved. It is not for lack of bills, and Congress has passed sweeping technology statutes when it wanted to.
Filed under Online SafetyData brokers get your information from public records, from companies you already do business with, and from each other. Nobody hacked you. The profile a people-search site shows under your name (address history, phone numbers, relatives, "possible associates") was assembled legally from two supply lines: records any member of the public can pull from a...
Filed under Online SafetySocial engineering relies on hacking people instead of software, and it has become quite the art. Rather than breaking through a firewall, attackers manipulate people by impersonating someone trustworthy, creating urgency, and exploiting fear and curiosity. This commonly leads to handing over passwords, money, or access.
Filed under Online SafetyDoxxing is the act of publishing someone's private, identifying information online without their consent (usually their home address, phone number, workplace, or family details) in order to harass, intimidate, or endanger them. The information is often technically public already.
Filed under Online SafetyNothing here matches that search.