Slashdot Mirror

Abine, the company behind the Blur password manager and the DeleteMe online privacy protection service, revealed on Monday a data breach impacting nearly 2.4 million Blur users, ZDNet reports. From the report: The breach came to light last year, on December 13, when a security researcher contacted the company about a server that exposed a file containing sensitive information about Blur users, an Abine spokesperson told ZDNet via email. The company said it followed this initial report with an internal security audit to determine the size of the breach. The audit concluded last week, and the company made the data leak public on Monday in a post on its blog. The data that was available on the web included each user's email addresses, some users' first and last names, some users' password hints but only from our old MaskMe product, and each user's encrypted Blur password.

chicksdaddy writes: There is a report today on the 21st century's newest luxury item: online privacy The Christian Science Monitor writes about the growing market for premium privacy protection tools available to tech-savvy consumers with the desire for online anonymity — and the means to pay for it.

The piece profiles new tools from companies like Abine that deliver everything from self-destructing e-mail messages to the 21st century's equivalent of Kleenex: one-off "throwaway" online identities to keep advertisers, merchants and government snoops at bay. Privacy experts, however, doubt that the new tools will tip the scales of online privacy in favor of consumers and away from governments and advertisers. "Consumers really don't have a fighting chance," says Andrea Matwyshyn of Princeton University. "Technology moves entirely too fast."

She and others see the need for both bigger fixes and the level of Internet infrastructure and law. "As a consumer protection matter, there needs to be a floor," she said. "Just as there are laws protecting renters from substandard housing, or car buyers from 'lemons,' there need to be regulations that create a buffer between consumers and companies."