Data Privacy Detective

We turn to Russia in our data localization series. Russia’s 2015 personal data protection law requires “data operators” to collect and keep information about Russian residents within Russia. It forces them to keep personal data about its citizens on a Russian located server, which must at all times keep at least as much data as is kept on a company’s servers outside Russia. This law resulted in Li...

In this second podcast episode about data localization, we spotlight India. Since 1993 the world’s largest democracy has enacted data localization laws aiming to keep certain personal records within India or otherwise restrict data transfers of Indians’ personal data. When in 2017 the Indian Supreme Court found personal privacy to be a fundamental constitutional right, a Personal Data Protection B...

The internet and the worldwide web – the words envision a global communications system that transcends national borders. But the reality differs. Is it increasingly the splinternet? Is www really a series of webs that don’t connect globally? And how is our privacy affected by data fences and controls erected by nations? In this first of a series, we explore how China deals with personal informatio...

Home is our private place. But in the digital age, how private are our homes? And what can we do to protect our privacy from home invaders? 66% of us rate our highest privacy concern as being viewed through cameras in our own homes, according to a safehome.org June 2021 survey. Explore in this podcast how home devices are watching, listening, collecting, and sharing our personal data and steps we...

Kentucky is perhaps the first state to adopt a comprehensive anti-doxing statute that creates a civil tort of doxing, as well as providing explicit criminal penalties for defined doxing conduct. It allows Kentucky residents to sue someone for intentionally disseminating their personal identifying information (PII) with an intent to intimidate, abuse, threaten, harass, or frighten a person or immed...

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Ransomware. It’s in the headlines. It’s digital organized crime across borders. When an organization’s IT system freezes with its data locked by a ransomware gang, what happens? Ransom is demanded, and ransom often gets paid. But how does this work? In this podcast episode, Bill Repasky, attorney with Frost Brown Todd LLC, shares key insights on the process of negotiating with ransomware criminals...

Ransomware attacks, data breaches, digital theft – on the rise. Who are the cyber-criminals? Can they be traced? And what can a company do to minimize risk and respond to an incident? Joining us for a tour of the dark side of the digital age is Bill Corbitt, Vice President of Digital Forensics and Incident Response at Intersec Worldwide. www.intersecworldwide.com, a US-based team of former federal...

Europe finds UK data privacy system adequate, for now. On June 28, 2021, the Europe Union granted two adequacy decisions to the United Kingdom for personal privacy purposes. 1. Decision on the adequate protection of personal data by the United Kingdom - General Data Protection Regulation 2. Decision on the adequate protection of personal data by the United Kingdom - Law Enforcement Directive This...

This is a true story of a phone scam of May 2021. The Data Privacy Detective got a call on the home landline. This scam will succeed in stealing money from countless Americans. It’s targeted particularly at older people who dearly love their television, especially during pandemic times. You can see the tricks and traps in this scam. Of course, the best defense is not to answer such calls at all, b...

This podcast episode explores ransomware from preventive, legal, and communications angles. While there’s no 100% effective vaccination against a ransomware attack, there are steps enterprises and each of us can take to beware, prepare, and take care. Ransomware. It’s the modern equivalent of kidnapping – except people aren’t grabbed and held hostage. Instead, an enterprise has its computer and in...

Janus was the Roman god of doors, gates, and transitions. He needed two faces to look in both directions - life and death, past and future. Internet browsers allow us to access and gaze across the internet, but at the same time, they are watching us, recording what we do while browsing. True, browsers do not charge us for their services – browsing is free. But as it is said, when a product is free...

Facial recognition. It’s a hot topic. Targeting, misidentification, and doxing - the dangers are real. So are the benefits – finding criminals and solving crimes, searching for relatives and old friends, researching history, conducting social research, sharing with friends over a lifetime. Kashmir Hill’s penetrating cover article in the March 21, 2021 New York Times Magazine, “Your Face is Not You...

On February 16, 2021 TikTok was sued in Europe for abusing consumer rights. Millions of Europeans use TikTok to post, share and watch videos 3 to 60 seconds long, ranging from dogs in pink tutus to Shaq dancing. The European Consumer Organization BEUC is an authorized entity in the EU to file complaints against businesses. Its press release, BEUC files complaint against TikTok for multiple EU cons...

Data theft set new records in 2020. The major causes are not failures of equipment, software, or services. In an estimated 85% of cybercrime, the cause is us. We make careless mistakes as though we were inviting villains into our homes. We let thieves into our IT systems by accident. We get phished. You get a message on your computer. It may seem to be from a friend, a trusted source, a reliable c...

As businesses move into 2021, what insurance can they have to limit cyber risk? What does cyber insurance cover and not cover? How is it priced and secured? Data Privacy Detective guest Sean McGee is a Vice President of USI Insurance Services, an independent company serving global clientele and accessing global insurance markets. www.usi.com / Sean. McGee@usi.com . Also an Ohio and Kentucky attorn...

Taiwan is one of the “Four Asian Tiger” economies. Its companies hold 66% of the world’s semiconductor market. It consistently tops the USPTO per-capita list of patent files, and its population of about 25 million enjoys what is considered the world’s fastest internet connection. It is becoming a major player in data. Considered part of China by the PRC which refers to it as the “Taiwan Authority,...

Data privacy is about balancing individual concerns and community needs. Without assurance that private information will be responsibly shared and used, people may not share accurate information or be willing to provide data at all. But to get student aid, applications must reveal sensitive family financial information. To gauge student success, performance details must be documented and shared wi...

We all value privacy – at least to some extent. But some of us want to be famous, and all of us want to connect with friends and acquaintances. We like the convenience from technology that requires our personal information to operate. So we share our personal details in many ways, and our data flows like water down a stream into lakes and oceans, some of which we’d prefer to avoid. And our informa...

Ransomware - a sinister type of cyberattack that installs malware onto a computer system. Once inside a network, the malware encrypts documents, freezing the IT systems of entities and individuals until they pay ransom to regain access to their data. Recent average cost paid to a ransomware syndicate? $333,000, according to Greg Edwards, founder and CEO of CryptoStopper, a leading anti-ransom soft...

Science and knowledge advance through information gathered, organized, and analyzed. It is only through databases about people that social scientists, public health experts and academics can study matters important to us all. As never before, vast pools of personal data exist in data lakes controlled by Facebook, Google, Amazon, Acxiom, and other companies. Our personal data becomes information he...

COVID-19 has changed the world in dramatic ways. Contact tracing emerged as an approach to fight the pandemic’s spread and save lives. The idea is to notify people who have been in close contact with another person who tests positive for the virus. This should allow the contacted individuals to self-quarantine and take measures not to spread the virus before experiencing symptoms or otherwise lear...

Brazil’s General Personal Data Protection Law or “LGPD” entered into force on September 18, 2020. In this podcast, Thiago Luís Santos Sombra of the prominent Brazilian law firm Mattos Filho, www.mattosfilho.com.br, explains the basic approach to personal data privacy of South America’s largest country. Highlights: • Brazil chose the European Union’s basic approach (GDPR), but there are differences...

Robo-calls, phishing, identity theft, ads we didn’t ask for – and worse. How does this happen? How does our personal data get collected, used and sold, without our knowing approval? Data brokers are a primary answer. They are businesses that collect, use, and sell blocks of personal information to a wide variety of buyers. This is not per se a shady business, though it may seem that way to those o...

A July 2020 Indian Government Report calls for regulation of Non-Personal Data. Most data privacy laws aim to protect (or not) personal data of people, This Report raises the question whether the world is about to see an explosion of regulation of non-personal data, which could change the business of data and how information flows within and across national borders. Stephen Mathias, head of the Ba...