If you’re not following or reading Brian Krebs, you should be. He does some of the best investigative reporting in the email, security and internet space. Today’s blog post is a disturbing look into the data selling and identity theft industries. Brian details evidence that shows Experian (yes, that Experian) has been selling consumer data to identity thieves.
Infoweek interviewed a number of people who acquired new Yahoo addresses during Yahoo’s address recycling and reuse process. It seems that at least for some small percentage of former Yahoo users, there is a major risk of information going to the wrong people.
Read MoreYesterday I reported that the judge had ruled on Google’s motion to dismiss. Today I’ll take a little bit deeper look at the case and the interesting things that were in denial of the motion to dismiss.
Google is being sued for violations of federal wiretapping laws, the California invasion of privacy act (CIPA) and wiretapping laws in Florida, Pennsylvania and Maryland. This lawsuit is awaiting class certification for the following groups.
As if suing themselves out of business by going after Comcast and Spamhaus weren’t enough, e360 is now suing Choicepoint for breach of contract and CAN SPAM violations. As usual, Mickey has all the documents (complaint and answer) up at SpamSuite.
This may actually be an interesting case. On the surface it is a contractual dispute. Choicepoint sold e360 40,000,000 data records containing contact information including email addresses, snail mail addresses and phone numbers. Some of the records were marked “I” meaning they could be used for email. Some of the records were marked “O” meaning they could not be used for email.
Despite these terms being reasonably well defined in the contract, e360 sent email to addresses in records marked “O.” Some of those addresses resulted in e360 being sued by recipients. During the course of the suit, e360 contacted Choicepoint and asked for indemnification. Choicepoint refused for a number of reasons, including the fact that Choicepoint told e360 the addresses were not for mailing. In response, e360 filed suit.
The interesting and relevant part of this case is the CAN SPAM violation that e360 alleges.