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100 Million Victims of Data Theft
jcatcw writes "With the latest significant data breach — theft of a Boeing laptop with unencrypted personal information on 382,000 employees — the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse estimates that the total number of data breach victims has passed 100 million since they started tracking in February 2005. The director, Beth Givens, admits 'the number 100 million is largely a fictional number,' but it surely errs on the low side. Since California is still the only state with disclosure laws, incidents are difficult to analyze fully. However, Congress this week passed a bill requiring that the Department of Veterans Affairs report breaches."
How can you trust the article when they make the outlandish claim that Boeing makes laptops. They make airplanes, silly.
This is an old problem - the banks / merchants etc... want to make it easy enough for you to spend your money or to get credit that you do it on a regular basis. If banks decided to make it harder - in order to increase their / your security / privacy then it means that they lose business, especially if they are the first to do it. Basically they don't mind losing a bit of money to make a lot of money.
Of course as long as its easy to get hold of your cash or get credit, someone will want to exploit that to get hold of cash or credit in your name. So making it harder to commit fraud or identity theft is really only beneficial to the customer, which in turn means that the only path to making it harder to commit fraud or identity theft is to introduce legislation or regulation to make it happen. That of course is opposed by the banks and merchants (as they lose out) and opposed by the majority of customers as they don't see that there is a problem until it happens to them.
So yeah, apart from not seeing an easy solution for the banks and merchants, I also don't really see a will to implement any solution which decreases the amount of spending or credit applications, or one that will cost money to roll out (after all most organisations are looking at short term profit not long term strategy's).
I have been counted at least twice though. I am a veteran and got a letter from the VA with a previous theft, and that was just a few months after I got a letter from Boeing telling me that my info was stolen. Have not heard anything about this latest one, I do appreciate the free credit monitoring I get now, but I am not convinced it would do me any good if someone was really using my info. Plus it is only for one year, that is a relatively short period of time, the info has an unlimited life.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
I realize this is probably a troll, but I'm responding in case it isn't.
/b/ scene. Get out of town for a while if you can.
It isn't too late. But you have a tough choice to make. You can either choose to make your life better, or choose to let life push you around. Changing is not easy.
Read Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche.
Pull your ethernet cable, unplug your wireless router. Take some time off of the
Think about your goals -- both the failed and incomplete. Ask yourself why the failed ones failed. Resolve to fix the problems that caused them to fail. Evaluate your incomplete goals. Make plans to finish them. Commit to your plans.
Exercise is good for you. I don't mean to make fun of your belly. But you obviously need to become stronger to become the man you want to be.
Don't sweat being bald.
You've wasted a lot of time, but you're still young. There's no point wasting any more.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Two words: Terminal Server.
I know it has been asked before, but WHY in the name of GOD does this kind of information need to be on a fucking laptop?!
My mother works at a VA hospitol and as such, has access to read and modify all the personal information necessary to commit identity theft on thousands of patients, and of course, she has a laptop computer issued by the hospitol so that she can work from afar. When she originally received it, it was nothing more than a Win2k box with VPN software, MS terminal services. All of the sensitive data was/is stored on the servers on their intranet. After a small "upgrade," the laptop was returned, only this time it came back with a full encryption setup. The interesting thing is that there is STILL no sensitive data stored on the laptop. It is, however, just as easily accessible. The point is, if someone stole that laptop, no sensitive data would be compromised, even if the encryption was broken (which probably wouldn't happen).
I don't fucking understand, why when we have the technology READILY available to completely prevent this kind of crap, that it isn't used. A shout out to all the companies on this planet: Centralize your damned security. Laptops cost $500. This kind of shit publicity and potential lawsuits cost a hell of a lot more.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.