IRS tax records lost on laptops? SOP.<\/p>\n
Credit card information obtained by hackers? Been-there, done-that.<\/p>\n
Names and addresses of folks who bought or requested free samples of sex lubricant inadvertently posted online and indexed by Google? Priceless<\/a>.<\/p>\n BioFilm, a privately-held California company specializing in sexual lubricants, exposed customer data files dating from 2003 to 2007 to Google’s search engine in early April. Google then indexed the pages and made local cache copies. A search on an individual’s name now reveals that person’s home address and the product they requested or ordered.<\/p>\n AstroGlide, a once niche product that is now stocked by major drugstore chains and Walgreens, took down its free sample page<\/a> on Monday (cached copy<\/a>). The page promised users that “All information will be used for mailing purposes only and will not be distributed to any outside organizations. Except maybe the paramedics if your free trial gets out of hand.”<\/p>\n […] The files indexed by Google contain a total of 263,822 listings, each of which included a name and mailing addresses. No financial information was exposed. A random sampling included privacy conscious entries such as Current Resident and clearly fake entries for President George W. Bush and former Republican Senator Rick Santorum. Possibly less humorous are the tens of thousands of entries from people who used their real names. These included included doctors, programmers, students and a vice chancellor for a prestigious American university.<\/p>\n The vice-chancellor reached by phone said he wasn’t particularly disturbed by the disclosure. “Obviously I would be disappointed [by the company breaking its privacy policy], but I’m not worried about that information getting out. I think I just gave them my name, address and phone number. I can see how other people would be concerned about it, though.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Of course, objectively, there’s nothing wrong with ordering or owning something like AstroGlide. Still, in our Puritanical American culture, I’m sure there’s room for some folks to be highly embarrassed — besides, of course, the IT folks at BioFilm, the product’s manufacturer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" IRS tax records lost on laptops? SOP. Credit card information obtained by hackers? Been-there, done-that. Names and addresses of folks who bought or requested free samples of sex lubricant inadvertently posted online…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,17,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-tech","category-homeland-security","category-love-and-marriage"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":134736,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/18\/social-security-numbers-broken-alternative.html","url_meta":{"origin":11020,"position":0},"title":"Social Security Numbers are broken. What is the alternative?","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 18-Sep-17 11:41am","format":false,"excerpt":"We are increasingly a data-driven world. There are electronic records about us everywhere, and we rely on them in a thousand different ways to identify us. But anyone who's ever worked with a system that tries to reliably and consistently identify people knows that it's a problem. What identifier is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Equifax-HQ.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":134918,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/04\/irs-hired-equifax-help-verify-identity-yes-really.html","url_meta":{"origin":11020,"position":1},"title":"The IRS has hired Equifax to help verify your identity. Yes, really","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 4-Oct-17 10:30am","format":false,"excerpt":"Equifax's CEO was just before congress testifying how the company's ineptness allowed a prolonged series of hacks to unveil the names, SSNs, DoBs, and other key identifying data of 150 million Americans (and some Canadians and Brits). That data could be invaluable in, among other things, tax fraud. Which is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Equifax%2BHQ.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4431,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/09\/04\/well_this_fills.html","url_meta":{"origin":11020,"position":2},"title":"Well, this fills me with confidence","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 4-Sep-03 2:47pm","format":false,"excerpt":"An internal audit found that IRS tax advisers -- you know, the ones you're encouraged to call in case you have a question on your 1040, etc.? -- answered questions...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":37852,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/19\/judging-social-welfare-and-tax-exemption.html","url_meta":{"origin":11020,"position":3},"title":"Judging Social Welfare and Tax Exemption","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 19-Jun-13 2:02pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Organizations under tax reg 501(c)4 are both tax-exempt and don't need to reveal their donors. They also have to ...... according to the law, be exclusively for \"social welfare\".... according to the IRS, be primarily for \"social welfare:.The judgment call by the IRS in approving applications for being part of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130423,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/14\/the-irs-should-do-your-taxes-for-you.html","url_meta":{"origin":11020,"position":4},"title":"The IRS should do your taxes for you","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 14-Apr-16 5:14pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This wouldn't directly benefit me, because we always end up itemizing deductions, but for the 70% of taxpayers who don't, it boils down to this: since the IRS already gets all the info you do on your income, if you're just taking the standard deduction, why don't you get a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":46212,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/03\/political-pulpits.html","url_meta":{"origin":11020,"position":5},"title":"Political pulpits","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Nov-14 2:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the bottom line: churches get tax exemption on money donated to them and on their assets. To then use those donations and assets for explicit political purposes gives such donations a favored status over ordinary political donations (which are not tax deductible) and church a favored status over other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n