A few months ago, I noted a lawsuit by a former Winn-Dixie employee against Purchasing Power. The complaint in Burrows v. Purchasing Power alleged that Winn-Dixie shared employee data with Purchasing Power to administer its employee benefits program, but also sent them data on employees not enrolled in the program. The complaint also alleged that although…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
UK: Private sector leads the way on data protection compliance but ‘room for improvement’ elsewhere (update1)
The Information Commissioner’s Office issued a press release today on the results of its voluntary audit program: A series of reports published by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) today has highlighted the positive approaches many private sector companies are adopting to look after people’s data. However concerns remain about data protection compliance within the local…
How Zappos’ User Agreement Failed In Court and Left Zappos Legally Naked
Eric Goldman writes: In January, Zappos (part of $AMZN) announced a massive data security breach affecting 24 million consumers. As typically happens in these situations, plaintiffs’ class action lawyers swarmed over Zappos for the breach, filing dozens of lawsuits. Zappos tried to send the lawsuits to arbitration based on an arbitration clause in its user agreement. Recently,…
Industry piles on to support Wyndham’s motion to dismiss FTC complaint
This might be a good time to follow up on my previous coverage of the FTC complaint against Wyndham, and Wyndham’s motion to dismiss. As I noted previously, this is the first time that the FTC has faced an actual legal challenge to its authority to bring an action over data security. Since my last…
AU: 23,000 Australians had their tax file numbers compromised last year
For perspective, given the massive tax refund fraud/ID theft in the U.S. Isabelle Oderberg reports: Over 23,300 Australians had their tax file number compromised in the 2012 financial year, according to data from the Australian Taxation Office, up from 22,000 last year. “Certainly, the delay in many tax refunds is because they have to go…
Maryland cyberdefenses lacking, finds residents’ info may be at risk – Audit
Aaron C. Davis reports some of the findings from an audit of Maryland’s Department of Information Technology and some other state agencies: … state agencies have not consistently or adequately protected personal identifiable information, such as residents’ Social Security numbers. They also have not consistently reported data breaches, according to the state’s nonpartisan Department of…