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Quora Announces First Major Data Breach of December

Quora has just announced that it discovered a data breach on Friday, November 30th. Taking a move from the playbook of, apparently, nobody else, Quora did not wait weeks or months or even days to announce the breach – going from discovery to notifying their users in no more than 72 hours. Thank you for that, Quora!

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About the Marriott Starwood Data Breach of 500 Million Guests Announced Today

The Marriott hotel chain announced today that their Starwood property has suffered a massive data breach of as many as 500 million guest records. Note that even though the breach was discovered days earlier, they are announcing it on a Friday morning; Friday is known to be the day to announce things if you want them to get the least amount of attention.

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Amazon Tells Customers “We inadvertently disclosed your name and email address” but Nothing More

Countless Amazon customers woke up this morning to an email from Amazon telling them that “our website inadvertently disclosed your name and email address due to a technical error.” And, in fact, that’s just about all the email said, other than “the issue has been fixed” and that there is no need for the customer to take any action.

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Safari Opening Even Though it’s Not Your Default Web Browser? Here’s How to Set Your Default Web Browser after the 2018 Update

It’s happened to more than a few of you. You know that your default browser isn’t Safari, and yet when you click on links in email or other apps, Safari opens, even though the default browser you set is also open. Here’s how to fix it.

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Facebook Reveals Massive Breach of up to 50 Million User Accounts

If you were required to re-enter your password in order to log in to Facebook today (28 September 2018), there’s a good reason: Facebook this morning revealed that it had suffered a massive breach, compromising as many as 50 million user accounts.

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Reddit Announces ‘Security Incident’

Reddit experienced a “security incident” in June, which they announced by email this month (August, 2018). While an email to Reddit users says that the hack affected “account credentials from 2007”, the full story paints a substantially broader picture.

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Walgreens Hidden Notice of Data Breach in Seemingly Routine Privacy Update

At the end of last week, on or around Friday, July 27th, 2018, Walgreens sent out a seemingly innocent email notice of Walgreens updated terms and conditions of use. But some people noticed that it contained a hidden message saying “Walgreens values your privacy. We recently became aware of fraudulent activity.”

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All About the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 – California’s Own Version of GDPR: An Overview and FAQ

Two weeks ago California passed AB 375, now Title 1.81.5 of the California Code, and known as the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (AB stands for Assembly Bill, meaning it was first introduced in the Assembly; SB would mean it had been introduced in the Senate). Also now known as the CCPA, the original sponsors of AB375 were California Assemblyman Edwin Chau, and California Senators Bob Hertzberg and Bill Dodd, Democrats all. The CCP is the California equivalent of GDPR.

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Thought Someone Was Blocked on Facebook? Think Again as Facebook Announces Blocking Bug Hit Nearly 1million FB Users

Earlier this week, in fact just before the 4th of July (was that planned, knowing fewer people would be paying attention?), Facebook announced that a “blocking bug” (actually an “unblocking bug – some outlets have been referring to it as a virus) had hit more than 800,000 users, causing people that the Facebook users had blocked to become unblocked, with no notice or warning.

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Global Comcast Outage Continues into 4th Day

On Friday people across the United States started experiencing a massive Comcast outage. Over the weekend, instead of getting better, it spread, and now, going on 4 days later, the Comcast outage is global.

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Explained: Supreme Court Hands Down Internet Sales Tax Law of the Land in South Dakota v. Wayfair (includes link to full text of SC opinion)

With today’s Supreme Court decision in the Wayfair v. South Dakota case, the Supremes have cleared the way for states to collect sales tax from Internet-based merchants who do not have a physical presence within the state; however the ruling is quite narrow in its scope and so does not open the floodgates for states to tax anybody and everybody who arguably does business online within a given state. Read on for a plain English explanation of this Internet sales tax decision, as well as a link to the full South Dakota v. Wayfair decision and the dissenting opinions.