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Category Archives: E-Government

DataBreach.com Emerges as Alternative to HaveIBeenPwned

PCMag: “Have I Been Pwned has long been one of the most useful ways to learn if your personal information was exposed in a hack. But a new site offers its own powerful tool to help you check if your data has been leaked to cybercriminals. DataBreach.com is the work of a New Jersey company called Atlas Privacy, which helps consumers remove their personal information from data brokers and people search websites. On Wednesday, the company told us it had launched DataBreach.com as an alternative to Have I Been Pwned, which is mainly searchable via the user’s email address. DataBreach.com is designed to do that and more. In addition to your email address, the site features an advanced search function to see whether your full name, physical address, phone number, Social Security number, IP address, or username are in Atlas Privacy’s extensive library of recorded breaches. More categories will also be added over time. Atlas Privacy has been offering its paid services to customers, such as police officers and celebrities, to protect bad actors from learning their addresses or phone numbers. In doing so, the company has also amassed over 17.5 billion records from the numerous stolen databases circulating on the internet, including in cybercriminal forums. As a public service, Atlas is now using its growing repository of stolen records to create a breach notification site, free of charge. DataBreach.com builds off Atlas’s effort in August to host a site notifying users whether their Social Security number and other personal information were leaked in the National Public Data hack. Importantly, Atlas designed DataBreach.com to prevent it from storing or collecting any sensitive user information typed into the site. Instead, the site will fetch a hash from Atlas’ servers, or a fingerprint of the user’s personal information — whether it be an email address, name, or SSN — and compare it to whatever the user is searching for. “The comparison will be done locally,” meaning it’ll occur on the user’s PC or phone, rather than Atlas’s internet server, de Saint Meloir said.”

Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP)

The GHGRP requires reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) data and other relevant information from large GHG emission sources, fuel and industrial gas suppliers, and CO2 injection sites in the United States. Approximately 8,000 facilities are required to report their emissions annually, and the reported data are made available to the public in October of each… Continue Reading

USGS Releases New Products that Map Four Decades of Land Cover Change

The U.S. Geological Survey today released a newly updated and improved National Land Cover Database, known as Annual NLCD, which offers insights into the changing characteristics of landscapes across the conterminous United States from 1985 to 2023. The latest dataset incorporates assessments and projections into six new products, which will now be released on an… Continue Reading

New website tracks government’s many digital services teams

StateScoop: “Last week, the Digital Service Network at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University published a new online tracker that documents details about government digital service teams across the country. The new Government Digital Service Team Tracker, which was published on the Digital Service Network’s new Digital Government Hub reference… Continue Reading

Fact check: Debunking weather modification claims

As the southeastern United States reels from the impact of two historic hurricanes, a large amount of disinformation about nonexistent weather manipulation technology is spreading across the internet, particularly on social media platforms. Below, NOAA identifies some of the inaccurate claims circulating online and provides science-based facts and information in response. Continue Reading

SBA disaster assistance resources

Data is Plural: “Following a declared disaster,” the US Small Business Administration offers “disaster assistance in the form of low-interest, long-term disaster loans for damages not covered by insurance or other recoveries to businesses of all sizes, private nonprofit organizations, as well as homeowners and renters.” The SBA publishes anonymized data about each such loan… Continue Reading

Where climate change poses the most and least risk to American homeowners

Washington Post – [unpaywalled] This article includes searchable databases as follows: Find your county’s climate risk. AlphaGeo, a climate modeling group, analyzed the risks in every county. Type in your county below to see which exist in your area. Figure out your state’s disclosure laws. More than one third of states don’t require sellers to… Continue Reading

What If Google’s Biggest Problem Isn’t AI?

New York – Intelligencer [unpaywalled]: “Let’s say you represent the most powerful government on Earth and would like to convey some information to the citizens of your country in a moment of crisis. We’re talking pretty basic stuff: How to apply for federal assistance after a series of massive natural disasters, the general state of… Continue Reading