Cybersecurity

This month, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 362 into law.

Also known as the “Delete Act,” this bill will make it easier for Californians to request that their online personal information be deleted.

Horror stores about ransomware just keep coming. Every week another city finds itself under attack by computer code that locks out personnel from the essential services they provide.

Your city is being targeted right now. The security protocols built into your IT infrastructure will repel most breach attempts. But they won’t catch them all. And sometimes – in fact, most of the time – it’s not about technology; it’s about one employee clicking on a phishing email that gives hackers access to your systems.

Over the last couple of years consumer privacy legislation has passed in several states, while many more states now have similar bills under debate in their legislatures.

Just as threats and attacks against judges, police officers and social workers have increased dramatically over the past decade, so too have threats risen against other politicians and public officials.

Have your kids recently started their fall term in school – or are they already back? And like any loving parent did you capture that moment with a first-day-of-school photo proudly shared on your social media?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this too is now dangerous, thanks to the constantly increasing number of awful people in the world.

Every website has a privacy policy – that almost no one reads.

And with consumer privacy laws being passed in several states, policies are being updated to keep pace with the new rights and restrictions they specify. That’s the easy part – but changing how companies actually handle your personal data is proving more difficult.

These days, the policy doesn’t always match the practice – and that is a problem for anyone who visits these websites.

Media sources report that the Fulton County Grand Jury in the Donald Trump indictment has been doxed. If you search on social media it won’t take long to find jurors’ names, home addresses and photographs.

It was, sadly, predictable. But that doesn’t make it acceptable. Whether it’s targeting jurors here or going after Supreme Court justices at their homes last year – this is not about politics, it’s about basic human decency, and not expressing your anger over any one decision or legal action in a way that makes someone else feel personally threatened.

You’ll see plenty of blogs on our website about how easily your private data can be collected and sold. What still occasionally surprises us is the sheer volume of entities engaged in these collections and sales.

That’s why a recent article in Scientific American caught our eye. It states:

Who else is looking at photos of your home on Zillow?

People trying to sell their house don’t think about that – they just want to attract a potential buyer. But those photos are accessible to everyone, including thieves and scammers.

What can they learn about you and your family by looking at interior and exterior photos of your home, or taking the 3D tour often included in such listings?

We know you would probably prefer not to think about tax returns until next April approaches. But what if we told you that information in returns you already filed may have been given to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, by the firm you trusted to safeguard your private information?

Apparently that’s exactly what happened, according to a new federal government report.