Personal email addresses from 235 million Twitter accounts hacked over the last several years have been exposed, according to Israeli security researcher Alon Gal — making many vulnerable to having their accounts further compromised or identities exposed if they have used the site anonymously to criticize oppressive governments, for instance….

So a date broker was selling the location-tracking data of people visiting abortion providers. Data about all sorts of things holds value, and in today’s world, your data holds plenty. Like it or not, your data has almost definitely already been bought and sold. Just like mine, just like nearly every other person’s in the good ol’ US of A. Of course, it would be nice if you or I had some say in the matter. Personally, I would not freely consent to my data being bought or sold without providing me a benefit, and that is precisely the reason why I don’t have any say in the matter.

Here is what is going on around the Sony hack tied to Sony’s ‘The Interview’ movie, and the The Interview threat from the Sony hackers. The Interview, with a Christmas release date, sees Seth Rogen and James Franco’s characters going to North Korea to interview North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and convinced by the CIA to take the opportunity to kill Kim Jong Un. Ahead of its release, hackers hacked into Sony, grabbed all sorts of private employee and corporate data, including copies of the movie and other unreleased movies including Annie, Mr. Turner, Fury, and Still Alice, and then issued the following threat, including allusions to 9/11.

If you received a notice from one or another company with whom you do business or have done business in the past, saying that your email address has been compromised due to a data security breach at email service provider (ESP) Epsilon (due to their customers’ email lists being hacked and stolen), you’re not alone. Oh, you are so not alone. Banks, large merchants, and others, have all had their entire list of customers’ email addresses swiped and leaked due to the Epsilon data breach. Chase Bank, Citi Bank, Best Buy, Krogers – even Disney, have all been affected – as have their customers. Of course, lots of people receiving these notices will assume that they are phishing attempts (and there will undoubtedly be phishing attempts riding on the coat tails of this fiasco). Here is the complete list as we know it today – if you have received a notice saying that your email address has been compromised, please add the name of the company involved to the list here.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested for rape in Sweden, and his lawyers are ticked off that somebody leaked the confidential police files stemming from the rape allegation. Huh???

In an irony that was almost assuredly lost on them, AT and T today apologized by mass email to all of their iPad 3G customers for the security leak (i.e. the hackers which had hacked into the system) which exposed their iPad 3G customers’ email addresses, exposing them to the risk of being spammed. Here is the email which AT and T just sent out – note the fact that they sent it from a non-repliable email address, which is considered a no-no in email sending best practices.