States settle with ChoicePoint over 2004 breach
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Data broker ChoicePoint Inc. will pay US$500,000 and has agreed to change the way it screens new customers under a multistate settlement for aÂ 2004 data breach.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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WASHINGTON -- Sprint and AT&amp;T will be paying a total of $1.5 million to settle with federal regulators. The government charges the phone giants failed to inform potential customers of their rights under federal credit law, after they were denied service.
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A customer filed a $54 million lawsuit against Best Buy for losing an $1100 laptop she took in for service. The reason, exposure to identity theft.  It's about time vendors were forced to recognize the value of customers' data. I recall how the chief genius at the Apple store in Emeryville complained that they would have to eat the cost of the drive in a deal they made with the manufacturer. Someday they'll have a clue that the data on most drives is worth far more than the hardware, and that their potential liability, if the data ends up in the hands of an identity thief, is also much greater.
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By Sara Kehaulani Goo, Washington Post Staff Writer  Last June, Google launched a service offering a one-click method of paying for purchases that minimizes the risk of credit card information being stolen off a Web site.
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ChoicePoint has settled with 44 states over a data breach that potentially gave criminals access to personal information from more than 145,000 consumers.
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Purdue Pharma LP has agreed to pay $10 million to the state to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of dishonestly marketing the painkiller OxyContin in West Virginia.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;has settled a complaint with a Web-based company it accused of selling people&#39;s telephone records without permission, the agency said Monday.The settlement with CEO Group, doing business as Check Em Out, bars the company and its operator Scott Joseph from marketing or selling phone records, and it requires the company to give up $25,000 of its profits from selling phone records. Selling phone records to third parties is illegal under federal law, the FTC had charged.The FTC in May 2006 filed complaints in U.S. court against five Web-based companies that obtained and sold confidential phone records to third parties. In addition to the settlement with CEO Group, the FTC has settled two other cases and obtained a default judgment against a fourth company. The complaint against the fifth company is still active.The FTC&#39;s complaints came after complaints from privacy groups and members of the U.S. Congress about pretexting, when someone obtains a telephone customers&#39; records without permission under false pretexts. In many cases, companies offering phone records over the Internet were calling telephone carriers and pretending to be the targeted customer. In September 2006,&#160;Hewlett-Packard revealed it had been spying on some of its board members and journalists in an attempt to uncover the source of boardroom leaks, and HP officials later said their investigators had used pretexting to obtain phone records.The Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibits customers&#39; phone records from being disclosed unless &quot;upon affirmative written request by the customer.&quot; The FTC charged the five Web-based companies of engaging in unfair business practices.The settlement with CEO Group prohibits it from obtaining, marketing or selling consumer phone records or other consumer personal information except where allowed by law, the FTC said in a news release. The settlement, approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, includes a judgment of $222,381, the amount the company earned by selling phone records, but the defendants said they were able to pay only $25,000. If the court finds that the defendants misrepresented their finances, the entire amount will be due, the FTC said.
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ChoicePoint agreed to bolster security and conduct periodic audits in a settlement stemming from a 2005 data breach.
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Averting a looming court battle over how it has been handling the exodus from its Internet dial-up service, AOL has agreed to make it easier for its remaining customers to leave as part of a $3 million settlement with 48 states and the District of Columbia.
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AOL has agreed to pay $3 million in fines to the states plus refunds to customers charged for unauthorized services.
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A credit union in Massachusetts has sent TJX an invoice for $590,000 to cover the monetary costs and reputational damage that the financial institution says it incurred as a result of the data breach disclosed by the retailer in January.
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(InfoWorld) - The latest status report on Microsoft Corp.'s compliance with an antitrust settlement in the U.S. has cleared the company of a separate accusation of not complying with orders to disclose information to make its products more interoperable. An expert witness in a class-action suit filed in Iowa, Comes v. Microsoft, testified that the company had not documented APIs (application programming interfaces) as required by the 2002 settlement with the Justice Department and states. The plaintiffs from the 2002 settlement met with the expert witness in the Iowa case and examined material, concluding that "there is no evidence that Microsoft has not fully disclosed the APIs." The conclusion was tucked away in the report, published on Tuesday, by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which monitors Microsoft's compliance with the settlement. Microsoft reached a settlement in February in the Comes case, filed in Polk County District Court, after plaintiffs argued the company overcharged them for software. In April, a judge gave preliminary approval to a settlement that calls for Microsoft to pay up to US$179.95 million to individual users and businesses that bought Microsoft software between May 18, 1994, and June 30, 2006. The case is due for a final review on Aug. 31. If approved, eligible Iowans will be able to receive $16 for OSes; $29 for Office, $25 for Excel and $10 for Word. Individual users will get cash, while volume buyers will get vouchers for products from Microsoft, its competitors and others. Microsoft estimates the cost of Iowa settlement, as well as settlements reached with Arkansas and Wisconsin in March, plus an outstanding case in Mississippi, could cost the company between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion, according to an April 26 filing with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission. Â
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I overheard a long-time hospital client talking to another support vendor today. The hospitalâs patient accounting department was attempting to send patient financial and billing data to a third-party biller. The vendorâs normal Web site was down, and they were trying to come up with an emergency fix.
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(InfoWorld) - Cingular Wireless, Priceline.com, and Travelocity.com have settled with New York State's attorney general after the state accused them of contributing toÂ the spread of adware. The companies agreed to pay fines and take steps to help keep adware off users' PCs but did not admit guilt in the case. It marked the first time law enforcement had held advertisers responsible for ads delivered via adware, according to a statement by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office. DirectRevenue actually installed the adware, which monitored users' Web activity and collected data they typed onto Web forms in addition to delivering ads, the attorney general's office said. The adware was very hard to remove from PCs, it alleged. The stateÂ sued DirectRevenueÂ in April 2006 but found that the three big-name companies and others had paid the third party hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their ads delivered via adware, it said. The attorney general found the companies engaged in deceptive business practices. "Advertisers can no longer insulate themselves from liability by turning a blind eye to how their advertisements are delivered," Cuomo said in a prepared statement. Under the agreement reached Monday, the advertisers will have to ensure any company that delivers their ads online does the following: -- discloses the name of any adware program and bundled software; -- brands each ad with a prominent brand name or icon; -- describes the adware and gets the user's consent to download and run it; -- makes it practical for users to remove the adware; -- obtains consent to keep sending ads to users who used to have the adware on their systems; -- make their affiliates meet all these requirements. The three companies also will make payments for penalties and investigatory costs, the state said: Priceline and Cingular will each pay $35,000 and Travelocity will pay $30,000.
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Update addresses potential denial-of-service vulnerabilities as well as a flaw in QuickTime.
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Just when you thought it was safe to go and shop for a wireless phone plan, the competitive landscape has once again shifted. This comes as no surprise as cutthroat industries with numerous players are bound to undergo consolidation.
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VoIP has escaped regulation by individual states in the US after a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC decided that Vonage Holdings&#39; DigitalVoice service could not be governed by dual