With the rise of bring your own device (BYOD) in the workplace a lot of IT people suddenly have a lot of visibility into personal data residing on devices that connect to the corporate network. Obviously, from a privacy perspective it’s only a matter of time before someone accidentally or on purpose winds up sharing data they shouldn’t.

Nobody can say Google didn't warn us: Notifications of changes to its privacy policies have been impossible for its users to miss over recent weeks. Come March 1, Google's privacy policies and the data gained from its more than 60 products and services all become one.

Godspeed, Barack Obama! Your new Internet Bill of Rights may be consumers' best hope for maintaining a shred of privacy against the strong winds of capitalism run amok.

To much ballyhoo and press coverage, the Obama administration has released a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. However, it appears the privacy rights consumers are entitled to on the Internet will become a topic for discussion with companies that oftentimes abuse those rights.

In a story that is getting all too common, Internet-based businesses are getting caught once again in the act of taking user data without permission.

The latest company to attain dishonorable mention is Path, the social networking and photo sharing site.

There is what we like to call collateral damage when a data breach occurs even when there is no damage to those whose records were exposed.

If there ever was a slippery slope to worry about, here’s a beaut: DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) is working on implantable bio sensors for the Armed Forces that will tell the Army, Navy and Marine commanders what their soldiers and sailors have been eating.

For those dissatisified customers who bought and then returned a Motorola Xoom tablet here's more bad news: It appears that Motorola neglected to wipe some hard drives clean before selling those returned Xooms as refurbished units.

ActiveStore, a service of TryMedia, a company that ;offers small game publishers their own privately labeled e-commerce site for selling games, is notifying its customers -- both publishers and consumers -- of a breach to the ActiveStore site in November and December of 2011.

In a unanimous decision, The Supreme Court Jan. 23, 2012, ruled that law enforcement officials must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS (global positioning system) to a suspect’s vehicle to track his movements.

People are becoming more aware not only of the security issues related to social media but also the business models that sustain the providers of these networks. As a result, there is a growing appreciation for just how easily personal data can be misappropriated.

It appears that for every one step forward we take in open access to information, we take one or maybe two steps backward in keeping our private lives private.

The U.S. government is one step closer to being able to track your every move online, thanks to the Big Data and high performance computing abilities of ADAMS (Anomaly Detection At Multiple Scales). It's designed to keep an eye on government workers with security clearances to detect future covert action on American soil, but one might legitimately ask, who's next?

Social networking sites are a goldmine for learning just about anything about anyone. But when it comes to potential employees, just because the information is out there doesn’t mean you can use it -- such an action could land you in a lot of hot water.

According to the results of the 10th annual Digital Future Project study slated for release early next year, almost half of all Internet shoppers don’t trust online businesses to protect their privacy. 

This week the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee discussed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a proposal that would give the U.S. Government new tools to fight the online sale of infringing or counterfeit goods. While on the surface it sounds like a good idea, the act has serious security issues that should be considered before we allow our government to change the way we access information via the Internet.

The town of Gastonia, N.C., is giving new meaning to that old expression, “garbage in, garbage out.” In this case it has to do with a city plan to place RFID tags in every recycling cart.

Over the course of the week and a half since Carrier IQ was demonstrated by security researcher Trevor Eckhart, a great deal has been revealed about the Carrier IQ software installed on a variety of smartphones by a number of carriers.

On Nov. 25, 2011, two major malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- set up operations to monitor shopper movement throughout the malls. The plan was to continue the practice through the Christmas shopping season. But their plans have since been cut short.