Over the years I have heard many times by my various government friends, even following too many mis-deliveries and lost packages to enumerate here, that packages and letters sent via the US postal service, and even through other delivery organizations such as UPS, FedEx and DHL, are considered as “secure” and that delivery is expected to be “guaranteed” or a “sure thing.” One time a couple of years ago an IRS employee told me curtly, “If we mailed it to you through the USPS then we can legally assume you received it.”
NOT!
Posts Tagged ‘PII’
Business Info Fact Of The Day: PII Sent Through The Mail Is Often Stolen Or Lost
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009FEMA Records Of 16,000 Katrina Victims Posted Online
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008How did the following happen…there are many options…insider threat? Poor IT storage controls? Poor applications development controls? Perhaps using real personally identifiable information (PII) for test purposes? Hacker break-in? Through an outsourced company with access to the PII, but who also had poor controls? There are so many possibilities…
New Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) Regulations
Thursday, December 11th, 2008New FERPA Regulations were issued yesterday…
New Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) Regulations
Thursday, December 11th, 2008New FERPA Regulations were issued yesterday…
Cybercriminals Threaten To Post Millions Of PII Records For Express Scripts Customers
Friday, November 7th, 2008Just last month I blogged about the new Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act of 2008. It covers extortion. I’m interested to see if it gets used for the latest extortion attempt…
State of New York Issues Guide For Protecting PII
Thursday, November 6th, 2008The State of New York just released a general guide to the protection of personally identifiable information (PII)…
How Does Your Business Use Customer and Consumer Profiling?
Friday, September 5th, 2008So, do you know how your business may be using data mining for customer and consumer profiling? Have you talked with your marketing folks about it?
Do you know how the stores you make your purchases from use your information to do customer profiling and other types of data mining? Have you asked them? Chances are the sales staff at the counters and check-outs wouldn’t know, but you could ask the store manager.
Not All Privacy Issues Involve PII
Thursday, September 4th, 2008There’s been a lot in the news over the past few years about customer profiling. The term is used somewhat differently by different groups and the definition often debated. However, the mainstream news media generally uses the term to talk about how companies gather many different types of information related to consumers, and then use that information to make determinations about groups of people in various demographics, and even be able to narrow down certain activities to specific individuals when enough data, and it does not need to be personally identifiable information (PII), is collected.
Laptop Containing PII of 1 Million+ People Sold On eBay for $141
Saturday, August 30th, 2008I’ve been doing a lot of work with data retention and disposal policies and procedures lately, remembering the silly things I have read about with regard to organizations getting rid of their computers, such as selling their computers on eBay when they no longer need them…without removing the information! This is certainly not a phenomenon that is confined to the U.S.
Lo and behold, another situation has happened where an organization sold their old computer on eBay…for a bargain at £77 ($141), and it contained a a huge amount of personally identifiable information (PII), including credit card applications, on what is reported to be as many as over 1 million customers. Here are a few excerpts from the report in Forbes…
