PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

10 Biggest Data Breaches: Facts and Lessons

  by Daniel J. Solove Recently, hackers from China stole 4.5 million records of patients from a hospital chain in Tennessee. Do you think that’s big? As a Bloomberg article notes, however,” they haven’t come close to entering the ranks of the biggest breaches of all time. In fact, they haven’t even cracked the top […]

The 2 Essential Ways to Prevent Data Breaches

by Daniel J. Solove We’re in the midst of a crisis in data protection. Billions of passwords stolen. . . Mammoth data breaches. . . Increasing threats. . . Malicious hackers . . .

The Biggest PR Mistake in Privacy and Data Security Incidents: An Interview with PR Expert Melanie Thomas

by Daniel J. Solove It happens all the time. An organization has a privacy incident or data breach. The news stories proliferate. Cries of “shame on you” reverberate across the Internet. A number of organizations have an incident response plan, but they often don’t have much of a plan for PR. Certain incidents can take […]

What Is Sensitive Data? Different Definitions in Privacy Law

by Daniel J. Solove I was corresponding with K. Royal the other day, as she was graciously providing some feedback on a training program I created, and we got to talking about sensitive data. In their privacy laws, many countries designate a special category of data called “sensitive data” that receives especially stringent protections. The […]

How Should the Law Handle Privacy and Data Security Harms?

by Daniel J. Solove In three earlier posts, I’ve been exploring the nature of privacy and data security harms. In the first post, Privacy and Data Security Violations: What’s The Harm?, I explored how the law often fails to recognize harm for privacy violations and data breaches. In the second post, Why the Law Often […]

Follow Professor Solove on Social Media

If you are interested in privacy and data security issues, there are many great ways Professor Solove can help you stay informed: Professor Solove’s LinkedIn Influencer blog You can follow Professor Solove on his blog at LinkedIn, where he is an “LinkedIn Influencer.”  He blogs about various privacy and data security issues. His blog has […]

The Most Effective Factor in Education

by Daniel J. Solove I’ve been a teacher for the past 15 years, and I’ve taught in several mediums including live classes and computer-based e-learning. I have come to the conclusion that the most effective factor in education and training is fostering emotional investment. Simply put, students must care about learning the material. The more […]

Do Privacy Violations and Data Breaches Cause Harm?

by Daniel J. Solove In two earlier posts, I’ve been exploring the nature of privacy and data security harms. Post 1: Privacy and Data Security Violations: What’s The Harm? Post 2: Why the Law Often Doesn’t Recognize Privacy and Data Security Harms In this post, I want to explore two issues that frequently emerge in […]

Why the Law Often Doesn’t Recognize Privacy and Data Security Harms

by Daniel J. Solove In my previous post on privacy/security harms, I explained how the law is struggling to deal with privacy and data security harms. In this post, I will explore why. The Collective Harm Problem One of the challenges with data harms is that they are often created by the aggregation of many […]

Facebook’s Psych Experiment: Consent, Privacy, and Manipulation

by Daniel J. Solove This weekend, the results of an experiment conducted by researchers and Facebook were released, creating a fierce debate over the ethics of the endeavor. The experiment involved 689,003 people on Facebook whose News Feed was adjusted to contain either more positive or more negative emotional content. The researchers were looking for […]