Don’t Even Think About Accessing
Computer Data Without Permission
December 19, 2003
This AP story reports that an employee of a market-intelligence company pleaded guilty to federal charges of obtaining unauthorized access to a customer’s computer files. The files included passwords and personal data of the customer’s own customers. The market-intelligence employee reportedly downloaded the data to CDs and stored it at his house, just because he liked to have it — he didn’t use it for criminal or commercial purposes.
The employee is being held without bond, pending sentencing in about two months. He faces up to five years in federal prison.
Marketers, Be Careful About Your GET Statements
December 9, 2003
Recently, several pharmaceutical companies narrowly dodged a privacy class-action bullet concerning their collection of data about Web-site visitors. See In re Pharmatrak, Inc. Privacy Litigation, No. 00-11672-JLT (D. Mass. Nov. 6, 2003) (granting summary judgment for defendants), copy available at the BNA Web site, on remand from 329 F.3d 9 (1st Cir. 2003) (reversing and remanding summary judgment dismissing action).
The lesson for marketing managers is to check whether your Web-site programmers are using GET statements in a way that results in saving personaly-identifying information about your site’s visitors.
Bandwidth Management to Keep Copyright Police Away
December 9, 2003
It’s said that a non-trivial portion of the Internet bandwidth consumed by businesses is taken up by illegal employee downloading of music and video files. This ComputerWorld column suggests that businesses can reduce their risks of being targeted by the record industry, video industry, etc. — and reduce costs too — by deploying bandwidth-management software: