Posts Tagged ‘Wal-Mart’

Big Brother Likes Big Data – Balancing Privacy with Innovation

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

My 12-year-old son said to me yesterday after getting home from school, “Hey, Mommy, did you know that Wal-Mart can tell when you’re pregnant? And so can Target!  Even before anyone else knows! They got a girl in trouble when they sent her dad coupons for baby stuff and congratulated her!”

Me, “That’s pretty incredible, isn’t it?  Companies are able to discover things like that about people more than ever before through analyzing what is called ‘Big Data’.”

Son, “That’s really creepy. I think you should (more…)

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Posted in privacy | 1 Comment »

A Couple Of Little Known HIPAA Facts

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Last week I was contacted by Corey Goodman, a reporter for HCPro, about a story he is doing that sounds like it will be quite interesting! He is collecting examples and anecdotes about “little know HIPAA facts” and asked me to contribute some for his article.
I anticipate that he will be cutting the couple of little known facts I provided to him down quite a bit, so I wanted to provide them here not only as a future reference for myself, but also for those of you who may be interested!

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Posted in Privacy and Compliance, Privacy Incidents | No Comments »

Insider Threat Example: Former Wal-Mart Employee Spied Because His Managers Told Him To

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

I have seen organizations where management and staff members were so fixated on protecting the company, to the disregard of observing laws and complying with policies, that they ended up doing completely inappropriate actions that involved infringing on privacy and breaking laws.

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Posted in Information Security, Privacy and Compliance, Privacy Incidents | No Comments »