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Category Archives: E-Records

How a little-known tool is sweeping the real estate industry by giving instant access to vast amounts of homebuyer data

The Record: “…Forewarn is primarily marketed to and used by the real estate industry, and it has been penetrating that market at a rapid clip. Although some real estate agents say the financial information it returns saves time when finding clients most likely to have the budget for the houses they’re looking at, most agents… Continue Reading

USPS shared customer postal addresses with Meta, LinkedIn and Snap

“The U.S. Postal Service was sharing the postal addresses of its online customers with advertising and tech giants Meta, LinkedIn and Snap, TechCrunch has found. On Wednesday, the USPS said it addressed the issue and stopped the practice, claiming that it was “unaware” of it. TechCrunch found USPS was sharing customers’ information by way of… Continue Reading

How to remove court records from Google: 3 effective strategies

Search Engine Land: “Legal issues can drag on for ages. That’s the simple, unfortunate truth. Worse, once a legal matter is filed in court, the case is highly likely to become visible on the web. Hundreds of websites now aggregate public court records and publish them for the world to see. The issue I commonly… Continue Reading

The biggest data breaches in 2024: 1 billion stolen records and rising

TechCrunch: “We’re over halfway through 2024, and already this year we have seen some of the biggest, most damaging data breaches in recent history. And just when you think that some of these hacks can’t get any worse, they do. From huge stores of customers’ personal information getting scraped, stolen and posted online, to reams… Continue Reading

10 billion passwords leaked in the largest compilation of all time

“The Cybernews research team believes the leak poses severe dangers to users prone to reusing passwords. The king is dead. Long live the king. Cybernews researchers discovered what appears to be the largest password compilation with a staggering 9,948,575,739 unique plaintext passwords. The file with the data, titled rockyou2024.txt, was posted on July 4th by… Continue Reading

FTC – Who’s who in scams: a spring roundup

FTC: “Scammers are all about spinning lies, but they still operate in the real world. Many scammers pretend to be well-known businesses to gain trust and make their stories seem more believable. And scammers use real-world methods to contact people and to get paid. Reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network point to some of… Continue Reading

AI trains on kids’ photos even when parents use strict privacy settings

Ars Technica: “Human Rights Watch (HRW) continues to reveal how photos of real children casually posted online years ago are being used to train AI models powering image generators—even when platforms prohibit scraping and families use strict privacy settings. Last month, HRW researcher Hye Jung Han found 170 photos of Brazilian kids that were linked… Continue Reading

Microsoft tells yet more customers their emails have been stolen

The Register: “It took a while, but Microsoft has told customers that the Russian criminals who compromised its systems earlier this year made off with even more emails than it first admitted.  We’ve been aware for some time that the digital Russian break-in at the Windows maker saw Kremlin spies make off with source code,… Continue Reading

How to manage deleted files on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS

The Verge: “If you want to get rid of files permanently, make sure you’re deleting them across your iCloud sync….By default, all of the Apple devices you’re signed in to with your Apple ID should be syncing files through iCloud, but it’s worth double-checking — otherwise, you can be leaving files you thought you’d deleted…” Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 29, 2024

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 29, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis  Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the… Continue Reading

How to Delete Pictures of Your House From Real Estate Sites

Lifehacker: “There’s no shortage of realty sites out there, and there’s not a huge amount to differentiate them—in the end, they’re all built to facilitate property deals. One of the things they have in common is that they all keep details of properties—including listing photos—online, even years after they are sold, rented, or otherwise taken… Continue Reading

Here’s how machine learning can violate your privacy

Via LLRX – Here’s how machine learning can violate your privacy – Jordan Awan, Assistant Professor of Statistics, Purdue University explains how machine learning has pushed the boundaries in several fields, including personalized medicine, self-driving cars and customized advertisements. Research has shown, however, that these systems memorize aspects of the data they were trained with in order… Continue Reading