Ray Everett-Church

With last week’s sobering news that medical identity theft is on the rise, we now face the prospect of privacy and security problems turning from annoyances into life-or-death issues. Medical identity theft is one of those “perfect storm” scenarios, the confluence of security problems with medical records and time-tested insurance reimbursement scams. Modern fraud techniques […]

As we approach the end of another year, the pessimist in me always enjoys looking back at the year to wallow in all the missed opportunities. High on my disappointment list for 2005 is the fact that, after yet another year of fighting spam, the world seems no closer to solving the problem of unwanted, […]

As this month’s controversy over Sony’s distribution of music CDs with flawed digital rights management (DRM) software continues to play itself out, the whole mess is already primed to become a classic case study in why corporations need competent Privacy Officers to keep them out of trouble. According to news reports, about 20 different CD […]

With losses from identity-related fraud topping $52 billion, the need to rein in identity thieves has been a pressing problem for financial services firms. But with banks and merchants still lost in the sea of costly new technologies for authenticating legitimate financial transactions, banking regulators last week fired yet another warning shot across the industry’s […]

I am an avid user of Instant Messaging (IM), using it to keep in touch with business colleagues, friends, and family around the world. Because I have friends scattered among the three major services — AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger — I have accounts on all three. But AOL’s history of […]

It’s been a bad month for Microsoft’s efforts to promote their visions of trustworthiness and authentication in Internet commerce.   Just as the ground began to crumble beneath Microsoft’s “Sender ID” email authentication proposal, it was discovered that the Redmond, Wa.-based software giant was considering acquiring Claria, one of the world’s most notorious adware and […]

Last week in Washington, DC., (good news never starts out like this) a panel of security executives and technologists sat down to explore the challenges awaiting a new crop of chief privacy officers who will be appointed to federal agencies in response to new law. Unfortunately, from the tone of some of the discussion, the […]

In just the last two weeks, two high-profile jobs in the worlds of privacy and Internet public policy were filled, and the appointments say a lot about the companies, the candidates, and how two major industry names have chosen to approach some of the thorniest policy issues of the day. According to the National Journal, […]