business

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28 Aug 2015 - money.cnn.com - Ashley Madison promotes itself as the go-to website for infidelity (Avid Life Media owns the Ashley Madison website. Noel Biderman @noelbiderman 'THE KING OF INFIDELITY' President at Avid Life Media Inc. Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Ashley Madison Agency)
- Information containing Biderman's emails is released on August 20, but the file becomes corrupted so it can't be fully accessed by the public.
- Two Canadian law firms say on August 20 that they have filed a $760 million suit against Avid Life Media. The lead plaintiff is described as a "disabled widower" who briefly joined the site after the death of his wife but never met anybody in person. 7. - Information containing Biderman's emails is released on August 20, but the file becomes corrupted so it can't be fully accessed by the public.
- Two Canadian law firms say on August 20 that they have filed a $760 million suit against Avid Life Media. The lead plaintiff is described as a "disabled widower" who briefly joined the site after the death of his wife but never met anybody in person.
- The stolen database of people who used Ashley Madison makes its way to the Web on August 19, making it easily searchable on several websites.  read more »

A data leak has resulted in around a million dollars worth of Woolworths gift cards needing to be cancelled. When Jason Wang checked the balance on his gift cards he found some had already been spent in Sydney stores.

*update* 11 August 2015
WashingtonPost - By breaking into the wire services, some of Wall Street's most vital and unnoticed information hubs, investigators said the hackers and traders were able to defraud investors on a massive scale while leaving no public trace, a worrying development for the increasingly intricate networks that keep the financial world online. With advance details on financial performance and corporate mergers from dozens of companies — including Bank of America, Boeing, Ford Motor, Home Depot, defense contractor Northrop Grumman and Smith & Wesson — the team made rapid and lucrative trades from shared brokerage accounts, funneling the money through shell companies and offshore bank accounts in Estonia and Macau... the sophisticated hacks targeted not just people's identities, but corporate intelligence, targeting a core vulnerability of the financial system in one of the digital age's most sprawling insider-trading schemes, and some hackers and traders were even aided by former broker-dealers. “The traders were market-savvy, using equities and options … to maximize their profits”, ...pocketed more than $100 million from illicit trades.

*update* 4 August 2015  read more »

Lucky you
if you’re not
data hacked
data tracked
data stolen
(when the innocent enjoy sharing,
some are busy sneaking, stealing)
data harassed:

Forbes: Expect Hackers To Crack More Retailers This Holiday Season

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*update 06March2015*  read more »

Colorado lawmakers unsure how to spend marijuana tax revenue

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"Saving Grace":
In this Sundance Audience Award-winning comedy from director Nigel Cole, newly widowed Grace (Brenda Blethyn) finds herself in financial ruin when she discovers that her dearly departed husband has left her deep in debt. With the help of her gardener, Matt (Craig Ferguson), Grace applies her green thumb to ganja plants -- and soon, everyone in her small English town is getting high on more than life.

Critical reaction to the film was generally positive and it received favorable notice for an independent British comedy film, eventually grossing $24,325,600 worldwide, following its theatrical release in the United States.

[2013] Reuters: Uruguay becomes first country to legalize marijuana trade  read more »

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Huffington Post - Lavabit Founder Ladar Levison On The Shutdown Of Email Service (LIVE VIDEO)

Washington Post - Lavabit, Silent Circle shut down e-mail: What alternatives are left?

PC Magazine - Google is making headlines this week for a court filing that some have interpreted as an admission that Gmail users should have no expectation of privacy while using the service.

Fox News - House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called the latest reports "extremely disturbing."

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Image courtesy ciphersend.com and techzane.com

"Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think." - Steve Jobs

Photos courtesy of thatswhatkobisaid.wordpress.com, macrumors.com, myhero.com/scrapetv.com, and Wikipedia

Two most famous French stars, cultural icons, are indeed very much French - they act on passion. Brigitte Bardot is determined to defend elephants (population shockingly dropped from 13,000,000 to 400,000 within 20 years) while Gerard Depardieu is extremely upset that 85% of his hard-earned money is not his: "I will neither complain nor brag, but I refuse to be called 'pathetic'". Per Daily Mail UK - 'Over 45 years, Depardieu has paid €145million euros' since he started working at age 14 as a printer. [Guardian UK] In protest not at tax hikes but at treatment of elephants, Brigitte Bardot threatens to follow Gérard Depardieu's move to quit France.

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