Your info’s out there but it’s not too late to take back control.

Privacy isn’t just about what you choose to share anymore. It’s also about what everyone around you can capture. A neighbor’s doorbell camera can record you walking past. A license plate reader can log your car. Someone wearing smart glasses can capture what’s happening around you. You didn’t choose those devices. You didn’t grant them permission. But they can still collect information about you. As recording technology becomes part of everyday life, protecting privacy can’t stop with your own settings and permissions. It also means thinking about what the technology you use might capture about everyone around you. The more devices we bring into shared spaces, the more privacy becomes something we owe each other.

Try this privacy experiment: Search your name on a people-search site. You might find your age, current and previous addresses, phone numbers, possible relatives, and other details assembled into one profile. Individually, those details might not seem especially sensitive. Together, they can give a stranger enough context to find where you live, identify family members, or make a scam targeting you much more convincing.

You never gave that spam caller your phone number. So how do they have it? It probably didn’t take a hack. Your number may have traveled something like this: 📱 An old account ➡️ A marketing database ➡️ A data broker ➡️ Another database ➡️ Eventually, someone you never gave it to That invisible journey can have a very visible ending: an unknown number interrupting your day, a bot pretending to be your bank, or a scammer who already knows your name.

That 10% loyalty discount can come with a cost most people never see. 🏷️ You share your phone number or email ➡️ Your purchases get connected to your account ➡️ Depending on the program, that data may be shared with advertising partners or data brokers ➡️ Data brokers can combine it with information from other sources to build a more detailed profile of you The discount lasts one purchase. The data you traded for it can keep creating value long after you leave the store.

“Accept All” is designed to be the fastest way past a cookie banner. Next time one appears, take an extra second to look for Reject All or Necessary Only before accepting optional tracking. One second. Less unnecessary tracking of what you do online.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month just started, and this year we’re focusing on something most people don’t think about until it’s too late: how easily privacy gets traded away in everyday life. A permission here. A signup there. A convenience accepted without thinking twice. Throughout October, those invisible tradeoffs will become visible, along with simple ways to make more deliberate choices about personal data. Once you see where your data goes, you can start deciding where it doesn’t need to go.

People trust us with some of their most sensitive personal data. Protecting it has to be more than a promise. That’s why earning our SOC 2 Type II certification matters so much to us. Independent auditors tested our Security, Confidentiality, and Privacy controls over time to verify that the practices behind them consistently work as designed. Read more: globenewswire.com/news-relea…

Agricultural giant ADM was hacked. Three days later, its employees sued. The lawsuit alleges hackers stole employee Social Security numbers, driver’s license information and other personal data, then posted it to the dark web. Workers argue ADM failed to implement adequate cybersecurity protections and hadn't begun notifying affected employees when the lawsuit was filed.

Got a data breach notice? Here’s what to do in the first hour: 1 - Confirm the notice is real through the company’s official website or app, not links in the message. 2 - Find out what data was exposed. A leaked password requires different action than a Social Security number or payment information. 3 - Change affected passwords and anywhere they were reused. Turn on MFA. 4 - Secure financial or identity data. If SSNs or financial information were exposed, consider freezing your credit and monitoring relevant accounts. 5 - Watch for targeted phishing. Scammers can use real leaked details to make messages feel legitimate. Save the notice too. It may contain enrollment codes, deadlines, or details about identity-monitoring services offered after the breach.

Researchers uncovered 30 exposed datasets containing billions of login records, much of it linked to infostealer malware. The records included URLs alongside usernames and passwords, with some datasets also containing cookies and session tokens. One year later, it’s still a staggering reminder of how much stolen login data is circulating online.

The FBI is investigating reports that more than 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver’s license records are being sold on the dark web. These aren't just names and license numbers. The database reportedly contains actual scans of government-issued IDs. The data appears linked to IDScan Net, a company whose technology is used by businesses to scan and verify IDs.If confirmed, this would be one of the largest exposures of government-issued identity documents in North American history.