identity

Epsilon, which manages e-mail communications for TiVo, JP Morgan Chase, Capital One Financial, US Bank, the Kroger grocery chain, and other clients, said this week that it suffered a security breach that revealed data on some of its clients' customers.

Epsilon, which says it sends 40 billion e-mails annually, released a statement yesterday saying that on March 30 it detected an "unauthorized entry" into its system that exposed customer names and e-mail addresses. The company said "no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk."

Bloomberg reported that an Epsilon representative would not … Read more

Customers of Play.com have been left open to spam fraud after one of the online retailer's suppliers suffered a data breach.

Play.com wrote to users on Monday outlining the problem, which it said may have exposed e-mail addresses, but not credit card details.

"We are e-mailing all our customers to let you know that a company that handles part of our marketing communications has had a security breach," said the message. "Unfortunately this has meant that some customer names and e-mail addresses may have been compromised."

Read more of "Play.com admits data breach&… Read more

Today, we're talking about identity. You own your identity, right? That's why we talk about identity theft: Identity is clearly personal, and it can be stolen from us. But it can also, in some cases, be legally taken. If you work at a modern business and you create relationships with people during that employment, it can be argued that, if those relationships are work-related, your employer owns them. But if you create a rich social profile that supports your work, say on Facebook or Twitter, it can be unclear whose identity, persona, or reputation that is.

Meanwhile, Facebook, and to a lesser extent Google, are becoming de facto universal electronic identity providers. You can log in to many new Web sites with nothing but a Facebook ID. So does Facebook own our identity?

To discuss these topics, we've identified two experts:

Dick Hardt is a champion of what he calls Identity 2.0: a user-centric identity architecture. Previously he worked on OpenID and OAuth and championed identity work at Microsoft. Currently he's working on: an "Address Book 2.0" personal productivity assistant.

Peter Kazanjy is co-founder of Honestly.com. Formerly Unvarnished, Honestly.com is a professional reputation and peer review Web site, where people can rate others in both an authenticated yet anonymous way.

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Some of our discussion points… Read more

This is a depressing Top 5. Seems like pretty much all the entities that should know how to protect our Social Security number still don't.

For the full, gory details, check out McAfee's list.

Victims of identity fraud should now have some extra help in the San Francisco Bay Area with a new grassroots organization, the Identity Theft Council.

The Identity Theft Council, which launched last week, is training volunteers at banks, credit unions, schools, law enforcement groups, and other organizations to work with consumers who have had their Social Security number, financial data, or other sensitive information pilfered. Theft of such information puts people at risk of having their names used for identity fraud.

"This is a neighborhood watch for the 21st century," Neal O'Farrell, executive director of the Identity … Read more

If you feel safer online using your PC instead of your mobile phone, you are not alone.

A majority 87 percent of people polled for a new study think their home PCs offer better defense against viruses, malware, and hackers than do their mobile phones. Released today by the National Cyber Security Alliance and Symantec, the study (PDF) also discovered that people may be overconfident in the power of their computers to protect them as less than half are using full security software.

Though only 24 percent of those polled said they feel very safe using their home computers to … Read more

The bottom line: A new name heralds some big changes for Trend Micro's Titanium suites. The overhaul to Titanium Internet Security 2011 brings users a faster suite with a smaller system impact. However, Trend Micro's new security engine is too untested to be able to recommend it.

Review: Trend Micro's updates for 2011 bring a substantially overhauled suite, from the name down to its detection engine. The new version brings a new interface, new cloud-based detection engine, and new features that, on whole, are changes as impressive as those that Norton has gone through the past few … Read more

In the name of bringing us together, sometimes Facebook can tear us apart. With laughter.

I have just learned that Facebook has, reportedly, removed Justin Bieber from its pages. Please suck on that oxygen mask with even breaths while I mention in passing that I am not referring to THAT Justin Bieber. Although, in a way, I am.

However, the Justin Bieber who concerns me most lives in Jacksonville, Fla. He likes playing arcade games, especially pinball. And, according to Jacksonville's First Coast News, this Justin Bieber does not have an easy life.

For he is forever mistaken for … Read more

The bottom line: A new name heralds some big changes for Trend Micro's Titanium suites. The overhaul to Maximum Security 2011 brings users a faster suite with a smaller system impact. There's a lot of extras to like here, too, but that's not enough to sell security on.

Review: Trend Micro's updates for 2011 bring a substantially overhauled suite, from the name down to its detection engine. Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2011 is the new name for Trend Micro Internet Security Pro, and along with the new nom de guerre comes a new interface, new … Read more