Why do we need overarching privacy and security rules governing how companies deal with our most sensitive data? Well, let's consider the case of the ongoing million-dollar manhunt for extortionists who have threatened to display millions of stolen health records--complete with prescription information--online.

The continuing investigation, backed by an offer of a $1 million dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the crooks, stems from an event made public in November. Express Scripts, a large company that manages prescription-drug benefits, reported that both it and its clients had received letters threatening to reveal customer information--including Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, and prescription information--if certain extortion demands were not met (for more information, visit the Express Scripts Support Site).

If you're among the multitude of people who rely on the Firefox browser to remember their Web site passwords (and there's no denying that I am), here's something you might like. The latest version of the popular, free Foxmarks add-on now has a feature for synchronizing and effectively backing up the passwords that your browser stores, in much the same way as it does for your bookmarks.

It's dead simple to set up Foxmarks so that whenever you add a bookmark to your browser at work, the new addition will also be automatically synced to your browser at home, and vice versa. For example, if you install Firefox on a new PC, you can install the add-on and give it your Foxmarks account information; and all of your usual bookmarks will be available almost immediately. You can also log into my.foxmarks.com to view and organize your saved bookmarks.

Far more dangerous than a normal e-mail attack, targeted at­­tacks choose a particular person as the prospective victim and tailor their message to that recipient. Since their creators craft the messages carefully (with few spelling and grammatical errors, for example), these attacks lack tell-tale indicators and thus stand a far greater chance of snaring a victim.

A recent e-mail blast sent out to LinkedIn users followed this pattern. The e-mail, which appears to have come from support@linkedin.com and addresses LinkedIn members by name, purports to provide a requested list of exported business contacts. In reality, the attachment launches a malware assault against anyone who double-clicks it.

All the major browsers--Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, Safari, and even the new Google Chrome--now have or will soon have a major privacy feature. The name varies from browser to browser, but the basic intent is largely the same: While active, it masks your browsing trail from anyone who might later sit down at that PC and try to check the browser's history, cookies, and other data.

While these features should prove effective in that situation, they won't disguise you from the sites you visit; sites will still be able to record your IP address and monitor the searches and other information you enter. And more important, the technology won't make you any more or less safe from Web-based attacks that might surreptitiously attempt to infect your PC with malware when you view a page--the favored approach among money-minded digital crooks these days. So you'll still need to be careful where you surf.

Comcast's move to limit its broadband customers' throughput to 250GB per month starting in October might anger those who want unlimited access, but it's actually good for privacy. Because the cap applies to all traffic equally, it doesn't require that Comcast snoop for particular types of application data. Contrast that with its previous (and initially undisclosed) practice of interfering with peer-to-peer traffic (in an effort to limit customers' downloading of huge, bandwidth-hogging files). The ISP says less than 1 percent of customers will be affected.

Of course, there's nothing to stop broadband companies from snooping in other ways. AT&T, for example, said earlier this year that it's investigating ways to dig deep into its customers' Internet traffic in search of copyrighted material, according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, AT&T is still getting flack because of its alleged spying on Internet traffic for the National Security Administration, without warrants.

To help you determine whether a particular alert is worthy of Chicken Little or is truly dangerous, here are translations for some of the most common threat terms.

A recent BusinessWeek article detailed a number of examples where the data gathered by information brokers conducting background checks on prospective or current employees was incorrect, or at least disputed, and cost people jobs. Thankfully, you can examine some of your records ahead of time, as you can (and should) do with your credit report, to make sure no surprises pop up when someone checks them.

SearchScan, as Yahoo calls the feature, is a good move that can help protect users' privacy and security, and one that I'd like to see the company take further. Here's how it works.

AT&T and other telecommunications companies are being sued for allegedly allowing federal au­thorities to tap phone lines for years without a warrant. President George W. Bush wants Congress to grant the companies retroactive immunity, and the Senate has agreed. But I think such a grant of blanket immunity would be a big mistake.

To be sure, this is a thorny issue that pits concerns over civil liberties and privacy against national security and government secrecy. Available information says the government wanted the wiretaps to catch communications with overseas terrorists shortly after 9/11. And certainly it was a frantic, desperate time. But the whole point of laws is to ensure that we--and more important, our government--act with regard for both safety and essential freedoms at just such periods. So you should care about how these cases are settled.

Imagine being able to check your medical history as easily as you can your e-mail. Or being able to provide records to a new doctor at a moment's notice. Google, Microsoft, and others are developing promising systems for storing digital health care records--for free.

But there's a catch (of course). Both the upcoming Google Health, currently in private testing, and Microsoft's public beta of HealthVault deal with our most personal information. The two projects will eventually enable doctors and hospitals to add records for hospitalization, doctor visits, and prescriptions (after you give your okay), and will permit you to upload data from devices that you might use at home, such as blood glucose monitors. They could be especially useful for allowing a new doctor to quickly confirm that, for instance, a prescription won't cause problems with other medications you're taking.

Upcoming ads routed to CBS Mobile via a company called Loopt will know where you stand--literally. And Loopt will modify those ads based on your physical location.

The privacy implications of using location-based services--which are just now appearing in the United States--are huge, but the companies seem to have made most of the right choices for privacy.

Privacy control. Personal-information protection. Identity control. All are great-sounding names for features you may have seen in your PC's security suite. But what do they actually do?

To find out, I dug into the privacy features of the top suites from PC World's latest security roundup: Symantec Norton Internet Security 2008's Privacy Control (part of its free Norton Add-on Pack), Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0's Privacy Control, McAfee Internet Security Suite's Personal Information Protection, and BitDefender Internet Security Suite 2008's Identity Control.