The recreational use of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), has become increasingly popular in the United States. While such use has gone largely unregulated due to the unlikeliness that these drones will obstruct air traffic, commercial and governmental use of drones—especially larger drones—has sparked safety and privacy concerns leading…
The recent cyberattack on Anthem, Inc., one of the largest health insurance companies in the United States, illustrates the persistence and severity of the risk of data breaches. On February 4, 2015, Anthem confirmed that one of its databases had been hacked. The data breach exposed personal information of approximately…
Virtual currencies have become a popular tool for allowing direct peer-to-peer online transactions using electronic payments that eliminate the need for conversion between currencies. Over the past few years, Bitcoin has enjoyed a considerable amount of praise as the virtual currency of choice. This hype carried with it significant funding…
In general, online privacy falls under two categories. First, is personal privacy. Second, is corporate privacy. For example, corporate privacy concerns the protection of corporate data (e.g., electronic communications) from retrieval or interception by unauthorized parties. Security is important for the protection of trade secrets, proprietary information, and privileged communications.…
The Internet of Things (“IoT”) is the next evolution and is making a remarkable impact on technology and our way of life. In fact, the availability of an omnipresent network connectivity has fostered the widespread use of smart devices. Devices are now able to communicate with each other through embedded…
Electronic discovery (a/k/a “eDiscovery”) is the process of identifying, locating, preserving, collecting, preparing, reviewing, and producing electronically stored information in the context of the legal process. Electronically stored information (“ESI”) includes anything that can be stored in electronic form on a computer or other media device. A computer is defined…
Online banking is an electronic payment system that enables customers of a financial institution to conduct financial transactions on the web. In today’s high-tech world, online banking fraud is committed on a daily basis. As such, sometimes customers may not be liable for certain unauthorized online transactions, subject to the…
Pay-per-click (“PPC”) advertising is a profitable online service that search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft, provide their customers. Now recently, PPC fraud has developed and caused loss of revenues for businesses and advertisers. PPC fraud occurs when someone or a program clicks on a company’s advertisement without intending…
In recent years, global positioning system (“GPS”) technology has increased in usage on various GPS-enabled devices (e.g., cars, smartcards, handheld computers, and cell phones). This technology brings value to its users, however, it has caused a significant decrease in privacy. Private and public organizations are able to collect and use…
In recent times, e-residencies (a/k/a “electronic residency”) have become a trend in some European societies. For example, the Republic of Estonia implemented this concept into its banking systems in order to permit people to manage their funds in an electronic environment. According to the Information System Authority, in 2001, the…