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Because of fears of data sharing, data loss, and inappropriate disclosure, people are circumventing their doctors and insurance companies when getting DNA tests. Smart people.

Can and would they use your DNA results against you? Do credit card companies raise your rates according to unrelated things on your credit report? Do insurance companies raise your rates due to traffic tickets that have little to do with telling how good or safe a driver you are?

Like I said, avoiding a record of your DNA is a smart idea.

Watch out for leaks

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According to an Associate Press article, it's quite common for employees to snoop through customers' personal data.

Vast computer databases give curious employees the ability to look up sensitive information on people with the click of a mouse. The WE Energies database includes credit and banking information, payment histories, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and energy usage. In some cases, it even includes income and medical information. Experts say some companies do little to stop such abuses even though they could lead to identity theft, stalking and other privacy invasions. And companies that uncover violations can keep them quiet because in many cases it is not illegal to snoop, only to use the data for crimes.

But of course, if they didn't store all that necessary data, this would be far less of an issue.

They dropped their "don't be evil" motto for a reason

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I…. I just don't have the strength to explain why this is a bad idea today. "Do no evil". Yeah… ok. You forgot about, don't do something that will make it easy for evil people to do evil, but I guess that wouldn't look as good as a company motto.

Oh, but don't worry! Your data will be protected by your Google account password! I feel better already…

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Another data breach, blah, blah, blah. Remember to freeze your credit and never have to worry about this stuff again.

Keep data safe? Pshaw.

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Georgetown U lost a hard drive full of personal data on students and staff. Of course, if they get a credit freeze, they won't have as much to worry about.

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It should be no surprise to anyone that enterprising scumbags everywhere are using the hopes of the economic stimulus package to scam people out of their information.

"They're calling people on the phone and asking for their personal information, and the people are thinking they're going to get some money quicker than they normally would," Special Agent Jeff Lanza, spokesman with the FBI Bureau in Kansas City, told WDAF-TV.

Remember simple safety: don't give out information over the phone especially to someone who calls you.

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According to a recent case, you have no right to privacy when having your computer repaired.

FTC

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Even though the chair of the FTC has clear financial interests in the merger of Google and Doubleclick AND she was on the board deciding if the deal could go through AND she refused to recluse herself, the merger has been approved and there's no sign of any accountability on the way.

But it wasn't a unanimous decision. The Register tells of at least one dissenting member of the FTC who sees vast privacy implications in the future. No kidding.

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Facebook has been caught with a seriously nasty tracking and monitoring program that it's unleashed upon it's users.

Their new ad software broadcasts your current activities to your facebook friends. If you just bought a ticket to a concert, your friends might see an alert to that effect. If you just bought medication for your embarassing personal issue, they might see that too. But it gets worse:

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.

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When the police in Greece used a surveillance camera network to monitor demonstrations, the head of their Data Protection Authority (along with the deputy head and two others) all resigned in protest.

Too bad our leaders don't have the same level of integrity. We can't even get our new attorney general to admit that waterboarding is torture.