Personally Identifiable Information (PII), as used in information security, is information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted, but the phrase it abbreviates has four common variants based on personal, personally, identifiable, and identifying.
All stories in Personally identifiable information
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How machine learning finds anomalies to catch financial cybercriminals
In the last few months, millions of dollars have been stolen from unemployment systems during this time of immense pressure ...
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If I go to a protest, what kind of personal information might police collect about me?
On the evening of May 29, New Yorkers went out by the thousands for the first big day of protests following the murder of ...
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Baby monitor exploit allowed hackers to creep on your toddlers
You might want to hold off copping iBaby's M6S baby monitor — unless you're fine with unknowingly streaming your toddler ...
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Report: US Department of Justice holds China responsible for 2017 Equifax breach
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) today brought espionage charges against the four Chinese military hackers allegedly responsible ...
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Twitter's default settings could be exposing identifying information
Twitter recently disclosed an “incident” in how the service handles phone numbers. The announcement declared that it ...
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How to protect your customers’ data after Brexit
With the UK heading out on its own, implications of leaving GDPR may find companies having to navigate their own version ...
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Mozilla and Element AI want to build 'data trusts' in the artificial intelligence age
Mozilla, the nonprofit behind the free and open-source Firefox web browser, is partnering with Montreal-based Element AI ...
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Hackers breached Macy's website and hijacked customers' payment info (Updated)
Popular US department store chain Macy's has revealed that its website was hacked with malicious scripts in an attempt to ...
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Open AWS database leaks PayMyTab customers' personal info
The personal records of PayMyTab customers have been left exposed online due to an unsecured Amazon data storage bucket.
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Privacy Statement This Privacy Statement applies to personal data collected, used and stored by The Next Web B.V. having ...
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SIM swappers arrested after allegedly trying to steal over $550K in cryptocurrency
Authorities have arrested two men and charged them with plotting to steal half a million dollars worth of cryptocurrency ...
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Microsoft pledges to honor California's CCPA privacy law across the US
Microsoft has pledged to honor California's landmark digital privacy law — the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) — ...
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4 practical tips to verify if your customers are who they say they are
In the future, a digital ID may replace all your current forms of identification. At the same time, as we become more and ...
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PSA: You can now auto-delete your location and web history on Google
Google has announced it is rolling out new auto-delete controls for Location History and Web & App Activity that allows users ...
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Period tracker apps caught sharing sensitive health data with Facebook
Popular period tracker apps used by millions of women are sharing sensitive information such as monthly timings, contraception ...
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DoorDash leaves door open for data breach, affecting 4.9M people
Popular on-demand food delivery platform DoorDash has confirmed a data breach affecting 4.9 million customers, workers, and ...
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Facebook election interference study delayed over privacy concerns
Facebook's plans to share open up its data vault for researchers to analyze the platform's influence on elections has run ...
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Over 13.7M US medical test records found unsecured on servers
Medical records belonging to millions of patients across the world, including echocardiograms and X-rays, are stored on insecure ...
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Hackers are stealing personal medical data to impersonate your doctor
When it comes to health, prevention is the best cure. Now it's becoming apparent it is time to extend this philosophy to ...
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Loyalty programs cost you your personal data — are the rewards worth it?
Rewards and loyalty programs are increasingly becoming a way to access your personal information. These apps make it easy ...
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Google open-sources tool for companies that aims to keep personal data private
Google open-sourcesis differential privacy library that it uses to glean insights from aggregate data in a privacy-preserving ...
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XKCD forum goes offline after discovery of data leak affecting 562K members
The popular XKCD forum has been taken offline after personal information of more than 562,000 members was exposed online. ...
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Project Veritas and 'whistle-blower' published bullshit 'data-leak' to dox Google employees
Project Veritas, a non-profit conspiracy theory outlet, today dropped the 'bombshell' that it'd obtained hundreds of leaked ...
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‘Full-time #crypto trader’ gets 20 months in prison for selling stolen data for Bitcoin
This trader says he was full-time in cryptocurrency, but he was actually running a data-hacking service on the side to earn ...
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Twitter admits to more bugs that shared your data without permission
Twitter said it has fixed two more bugs related to how it uses personally identifiable information to target personalized ...
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Online sneaker marketplace failed to come clean about 6.8M record data breach
StockX — a popular online destination for apparel and shoe trading — has become the latest company to fall victim to ...
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Google will remove shady data-stealing Chrome extensions starting October 15
Google has said its new policy for Minimum Permission and updated User Data policy will be enforced starting October 15, ...
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FTC sues now-bankrupt Cambridge Analytica over 'deceptive practices'
The FTC has initiated legal action against Cambrldge Analytica data for deceptively harvesting personal information of millions ...
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9 days until the crypto industry must verify the identity of anyone sending $1,000 or more
New rules by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) will force cryptocurrency businesses in 200 countries to introduce stricter ...
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Hackers steal 100,000 traveler photos from border patrol database
US Customs and Border Protection said that one of its subcontractors had been breached in a "malicious cyberattack," exposing ...
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South African voters fear mobile political campaigns will steal their personal info
Mobile technology will arguably go down in history as the most successful innovation of our lifetime. Mobile devices, especially ...
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Rebuilding trust in democracy starts with digital identity verification
As Mark Zuckerberg recently wrote, “free and fair elections are the heart of every democracy.” Despite controversy over ...
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Report: ICE database tracks nearly 60% of US population without a warrant
Internal documents revealed by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal the extent and illegal nature ...
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2.7 million patient calls to Swedish healthcare hotline left unprotected online
2.7 millions audio recordings of calls made to 1177 Vårdguiden were left online without any authentication or encryption. ...
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15 strategies everyone should know to protect their online information
As technology increases at an ever-faster rate, so too do the ways in which our information can be put at risk. With the ...
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How I became pen pals with the kid who stole my iPhone
I’d always wanted to go to India. So I was pretty outraged when, in 2011, my iPhone went without me. I think it’s only ...
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Google has quietly dropped ban on personally identifiable web tracking
This article was originally published by ProPublica on October 21st, 2016. When Google bought the advertising network ...
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Facebook convinced teens to sell their privacy for $20
Another day, another Facebook controversy
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ShapeShift forced to 'help' police with 60 cryptocurrency inquiries last year
The FBI and the SEC were noted as the most common US agencies to request information related to cryptocurrency users on ShapeShift ...
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This Chinese app reportedly maps nearby debtors to get you to shame them
China has reportedly launched a WeChat mini-app to highlight debtors around you, in an effort to shame them for not paying ...
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China hacked the US Navy and stole personal info on at least 100K sailors
The US Department of Justice today unsealed documents pertaining to the Chinese state-sponsored hacking group APT 10's years-long ...
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The free internet makes us the product — we need to stop it
The bad headlines continue to stack up for Facebook this year: from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to the New York Times ...
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What GoDaddy is doing wrong about privacy — here’s what it should do
GoDaddy asks users to pay for privacy protection. It's distasteful that a large domain registrar would charge a fee for a ...
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Here's how we take back control over our digital identities
The data reckoning has arrived. We’re already too familiar with the breach headlines: Equifax, Under Armour, Target. But ...
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Don’t post your kid online
As we set out on a two-hour drive, my pregnant girlfriend told me she didn’t want anyone, including ourselves, to share ...
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We’re living in digital serfdom — trading privacy for convenience
Think for a second: compared to your grandparents and parents, what do you actually own outright? Why own when you can ...
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Is Tim Cook the champion of privacy?
Today’s ceaseless data scandals have everyone talking about privacy, especially insofar as our favorite digital devices ...
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Here’s how face recognition tech can be GDPR compliant
Ah, face recognition, that nifty little feature that's already making the still new fingerprint scanners (kind of) obsolete. ...
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Facebook fined 0.001% of its 2017 revenue for Cambridge Analytica scandal
UK watchdog just fined Facebook £500,000 for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but the amount is unlikely to affect the social ...
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Here's how to keep advertisers from using your phone number on Facebook
A Gizmodo report on Wednesday detailed the latest in a long series of Facebook privacy blunders. The report said, and Facebook ...
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Google and Mastercard are secretly tracking your offline purchases
Google has quietly been providing select advertisers a "stockpile" of offline credit card transaction data. After a four ...
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EU suggests law to stop Cambridge Analytica-style election meddling
The European Commission is currently working on a proposal which will impose fines on political parties using Cambridge Analytica-style ...
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GDPR is eroding our privacy, not protecting it
It's been more than a couple of months since GDPR (the EU General Data Protection Regulation) came into force. The promise ...
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5 types of social spam (and how to prevent them)
Spam can be defined as irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the Internet. These are usually sent to a large number ...
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5 authentication methods putting passwords to shame
There’s no arguing that passwords are becoming less and less reliable in protecting our data and identities. Their management, ...
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7 ways to protect your privacy on the internet
Here are seven ways you can protect your personal information and privacy online
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9 ways of gathering meaningful data about your customers
Understanding your customers better isn't as complex as you might think, but it does require a thoughtful analysis of where ...
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Three reasons why Disconnect is the VPN’s next generation
Right now, you can find out for yourself why picking up this tracking blocker/VPN all under one hood is such a plus. Disconnect ...
