Clients are increasingly turning to AI before they speak with outside counsel, and sometimes after, by pasting legal advice, contract language, or other work product into a public AI model to ask follow-up questions. Used thoughtfully, these tools can help clients frame questions and organize information, but an answer that sounds confident is not necessarily
Data Security
Chatrie + the Shrinking Third-Party Doctrine: What Data Custodians Should Watch
This post was authored by William S. Fallon, Associate in Robinson+Cole’s Business Litigation group.
In Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112 (U.S. June 29, 2026), the Supreme Court took another step in redefining digital privacy under the Fourth Amendment, building directly on its landmark decision in Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296…
Privacy Tip #483 – Whistleblower Alleges DOGE Employee Stole Social Security Data on a Thumb Drive
The Washington Post has published a report detailing a whistleblower complaint alleging that a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee stole two complete databases from the U.S. Social Security Administration while employed as a DOGE software engineer.
The databases stolen include the “’Numident’ and the ‘Master Death File,’ which could cover records for more…
Privacy Tip #482 – ShinyHunters Hits Wynn Resorts
ShinyHunters continues to wreak havoc against well-known brands; most recently, Wynn Resorts. Wynn Resorts has confirmed that “an unauthorized third party acquired certain employee data.” It is believed that the threat actor was ShinyHunters. Fortunately for Wynn, the incident is not affecting its operations, and its resorts remain fully functional.
ShinyHunters announced it was the…
Auto Credit Check Company Breach Affects 5.6 Million
700Credit, a Michigan-based company that runs credit checks and identification verification services for automobile dealerships nationwide, has announced that an “integrated partner” was compromised, allowing a bad actor to obtain unauthorized access to its network of information about individuals whose credit the company checked. The incident was discovered on October 25, 2025.
Michigan officials confirmed…
FTC Settles With Illuminate for Data Breach of $10M Students’ Data
On December 1, 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved a proposed complaint and order against Illuminate Education, Inc., an education technology provider requiring it to “to implement a data security program and delete unnecessary data to settle allegations that the company’s data security failures led to a major data breach, which allowed hackers to…
U.S. Retailers Bracing for Scattered Spider Attacks
Google sent out a warning that the cybercriminal group Scattered Spider is targeting U.S.-based retailers. Scattered Spider is believed to have been responsible for the recent attack on Marks & Spencer in the U.K. A security researcher at Google has posited that Scattered Spider concentrates attacks on one industry at a time and predicts that…
AI Powered Bot Targeted 400,000 Websites
SentinelOne researchers have discovered AkiraBot, which is used to target small- to medium-sized company websites with generative AI, and drafted outreach messages for website chats, comments, and contact forms. SentinelOne estimates that over 400,000 websites have been targeted, and the bot has successfully spammed “at least 80,000 websites since September 2024.”
The bot generated…
Privacy Tip #439 – Government Officials’ Venmo Accounts Publicly Accessible
Wired has reported that several government officials involved in the Signal chat exposing sensitive national security plans have also exposed their Venmo accounts by not adjusting their account privacy settings to prohibit the information from being publicly accessible. This means that they “left not only their contact lists publicly visible but also their transactions, which…
EdTech and Privacy of Student Information: A Case Study
On March 27, 2025, a class action lawsuit was filed against the education technology (EdTech) company Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, a popular learning management system. The complaint alleges that Instructure violated children’s federal and state privacy rights. According to the complaint, Instructure states that it collects various account information about children, including name…