The Biggest Crisis

We hear the word “crisis” a lot these days. A phenomenon of our age is that issues are transformed into crises, and many crises are transformed into existential threats. Think about the way we looked at online harms and screen time for children. Just a year or two ago, the rage was the claim that… Read More

Anonymous Schanonymous

Everybody loves a fad. You can pinpoint someone’s generation better than carbon dating by asking them what their favorite toys and gadgets were as a kid. Tamagotchi and pogs? You were born around 1988, weren’t you? Coleco Electronic Quarterback and Garanimals? Well well, an early X-er. A fad is cultural currency and social lubricant at… Read More

Protecting Your Data, Protecting Your Business

One of the biggest concerns we have when we talk to clients about how to create data partnerships is the security and protection of data.  We don’t mean cybersecurity and the literal safeguarding of information, though that’s undoubtedly essential too.  Instead, we’re talking about ensuring that datasets are used only as appropriate, are kept within… Read More

How to Make Channel Data Partnerships into Engines for Growth

This week, we’ve explored how you can use channel partnerships to develop your data products, make your brand recognizable, and leverage the skill sets of other companies to drive growth.  Affiliate partnerships give you the benefit of finding new customers and supplementing your areas of weaker (or at least less strong) competency.  Reseller partnerships broadcast… Read More

Understanding Reseller Channel Partnerships

On Monday, we talked about how to structure channel data partnerships, particularly in the context of affiliates.  Affiliate partnerships are a great way to ensure that your data reaches the widest possible audience, relying on the affiliate’s access to potential customers.  They are, in effect, a force multiplier for your data, broadcasting it to a… Read More

A Post About Bread! (And Data too, I Guess)

We’re big fans of January around here, enjoying, as we do, the prospect of starting the new year off the right way and looking at things afresh. There’s something special about the focus that comes with new beginnings and the excitement of starting new projects after the whirlwind of the holiday season. The one thing… Read More

Two Gifts You Should Think About Returning

Happy Boxing Day from everyone at Ward PLLC.  We hope that you’re all having an enjoyable, and suitably private, holiday season. For many people, today is a day of quiet, calm, reflection, relaxation, and desperately trying to find out if you can get cash refunds from Restoration Hardware for the gifts your in-laws inexplicably decided… Read More

Enough with the Tracking Already

You may not have read the New York Times Privacy Project yet, but if not, now is the time to do so.  They have begun a series on the nature of tracking individuals via cellphones, armed with a treasure trove of over 50 billion pings on 12 million phones.  The results are dramatic, showing just… Read More

The Privacy Quadrant: A DataSmart Approach to User Consent

Very often, we hear clients or businesses express the idea that “we want to give our customers control over the privacy of their data, and that sounds good, but making it a reality is much more complicated.”  That’s a fair assessment — operationalizing privacy is something that companies in the U.S. have a difficult time… Read More

Who Can Sue Over Lost or Misused Data?

It’s hardly controversial to say that data breaches are a bad thing for business, resulting in lost customers, lost confidence, and lost credibility.  But what about the lost data?  What kind of consequences come, for instance, when a malicious insider sells vast quantities of customer data, or an outsider exploits a weakness in your security… Read More

The Challenges of Ethical AI

There have been dozens of articles and news pieces about the need for “ethics in AI” or “ethical AI.”  This (apparently brand new) issue arises from a number of causes, including public concern over facial recognition, the use of automated decisionmaking, and the ongoing public fascination with the darker side of artificial intelligence (see: Black… Read More

Apple Plays the Long (Privacy) Game

You may have seen yesterday that Apple took another step in its recent efforts to become the public’s favorite privacy-protecting tech giant.  At WWDC, the company’s annual developer conference, CEO Tim Cook unveiled the new “Sign In with Apple” feature, a user authentication platform.  Like the secure sign-on (SSO) platforms designed by Google and Facebook,… Read More

Thinking About Data Partnership Contracts – From Data Leverage

We’ve know a number of clients or friends whose businesses are going through the initial phases of a data partnership lately.  These relationships are often mission-critical, because without the added benefits of the data partnership, sometimes entire business strategies fall apart.  At the same time, if you don’t take a thoughtful approach to establishing the… Read More

Getting Bad Advice

The Internet is a risky place for “expertise.”  Because it is both a platform and a megaphone, it creates its own multiplier effect for whatever you put into it.  If the arguments of the last few years have proven anything, it’s that even a poorly concocted lie spreads far faster than a well-explained truth, largely… Read More

Genetic Testing and the Illusion of Privacy (Policies)

One recent trend that makes privacy professionals very nervous is the “what’s my DNA say about me” fad.  You swab your cheek, mail it off to a lab, and presto: you learn that you’re 99% Irish/Scottish and 1% Pacific Islander with a high chance of getting appendicitis.  Obviously, unlocking the mysteries of our ancestry is… Read More

Employee Monitors and Big Brother at Work

Although we consistently discuss the importance of managing data about customers or partners, it’s crucial to pay attention to a key demographic of your intrinsic datasets – employees.  Your team generates an enormous volume of data simply by showing up to the office (HR data, payment information, personal login details and passwords, etc), and the… Read More

Bezos Understands the Value of Shared Data (Or: Sharing is Caring)

One of the issues we confront with new clients is the difficulty in getting information from one segment or division of your business to another.  Data “silos” are extremely common, with unnecessary or unhelpful barriers between groups creating the kind of friction that diminishes your ability to achieve goals.  That can mean difficulty in getting… Read More

It’s 3am. Does the Dark Web Know Where You Are? (Yes.)

In a move likely driven by federal pressure and calls for an investigation, AT&T yesterday announced that it will no longer sell its customers’ location data to third parties, including data aggregators who, in turn, sell the information to others.  The public response has been to say “It’s about time” immediately after saying “Hold on,… Read More

Data Security for Dummi…I Mean, for Lawyers

Today we’ll talk about something near and dear to my heart: data security for lawyers. I recognize that this is not a topic that many lawyers want to discuss, or one that they feel comfortable discussing.  But the reality is that data security is an important part of being a lawyer, even if it’s not… Read More

GDPR Countdown – Three Weeks to Go

It’s May, which means we’re now in that frantic time period leading up to the GDPR where the biggest concerns loom largest. For some, that’s the documentary obligations under the Regulation, for others it is whether to hire a DPO, but it seems that everyone I talk to is worried about Article 20’s requirement for… Read More