The F Bomb
March 28, 2006 | Filed Under Privacy, Technology, In the News
No, not that one.
It’s the sort of bomb that Fidelity dropped on Hewlett-Packard when it disclosed that a company laptop containing personal information on 196,000 HP employees was recently stolen.
The laptop contained “… data including the participants’ names, addresses, birthdates and social security numbers.” It was reportedly being used for an offsite meeting. Fidelity is doing big-time damage control:
Fidelity, which provides financial services for about 21 million people, says it hasn’t detected any misuse of the information and that safeguards in place may prevent misuse. The application with the data had a temporary license that has expired, so the data would be difficult to interpret and “generally unusable,” a spokeswoman says. And the company is requiring additional authentication to access the affected HP accounts.
So if I’m an HP employee, I’m hopping mad. If I’m one of the other 20 million or so customers of Fidelity, I’m thinking the word “Vanguard” sounds rather inviting right about now, Paul McCartney ads notwithstanding (turn your speakers down).
In an age of growing concerns about customer privacy, I find it staggering that personal data is moving around on the laptops of a company as sophisticated as Fidelity. Particularly when it includes the Rosetta Stone: apparently unencrypted SS numbers. Do you think this is the only time this has ever happened at Fidelity? The only time it has happened in the financial services industry? What about the healthcare industry?
The politicians are still arguing about this stuff.
Despite all the privacy protections instituted by many companies, if laptops or sync-able PDAs can copy and take offsite deeply personal customer information, legislation or regulation will soon follow. Thus the innocent are punished by the sins of the guilty.
It’s another reason why “privacy” is going to be a key word for GCs and their corporate compliance programs in the future.
Like tomorrow.
Fidelity employee stuck in traffic?
Hold on to Your Business Card
March 23, 2006 | Filed Under Privacy, Law 2.0, Technology
And watch out who you send an Outlook vCard to.
According to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, web company Jigsaw wants your contact information. So badly it seems, that it will pay others for it.
Recovering attorney Mr. Arrington explains Jigsaw thusly:
Unlike competitors like Hoovers and InfoUSA, which gather company information by semi-legitimate means such as scouring SEC filings, cold calling companies and asking for information, and reviewing other public documents, Jigsaw simply pays people to upload other people’s contact information. Users are paid $1 for every contact they upload, and some users have uploaded information on tens of thousands of people. See the demo (and note the other demos on that page as well). Jigsaw is also self correcting, and incentivizes people to also correct bad contact information.
If innovative ways to use and grow Internet applications for business are Web 2.0, Jigsaw may be Law 9.11.
I think the business card of the future will have your name on it (first and last, no middle initial), company name, and an email address that doesn’t resolve to your company domain. This is your public contact/email persona. No phone numbers, no fax numbers (can you say “Nigerian scam fax” three times quickly?), no address, and for heaven’s sake no cell phone number.
Then if the person hits your email (like lawman2681@gmail.com) and you want to continue the contact, you can, over time, work them into your truly personal business contact information.
With Google Maps and telephone number reverse lookups, we now know what Sun’s Scott McNealy meant when he said we have no privacy, get over it.
No word on whether Mr. McNealy’s contact info is available through Jigsaw.
Search
| ||||
 | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
