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."

Comments

Another day, another data leak.

[inotocracy]

When are these companies going to start getting fined for data leaks? I'd bet this sort of thing would be a lot less common if there was a huge price to pay, other than a useless apology note.

Re:Another day, another data leak.

[jlarocco]

When are these companies going to start getting fined for data leaks? I'd bet this sort of thing would be a lot less common if there was a huge price to pay, other than a useless apology note.

Having the government impose a fine is not the answer. The *only* way companies will ever learn to properly secure consumer data is if consumers drive them out of business when they fuck it up. If consumers can't be bothered with 5 minutes of research to avoid companies with poor privacy practices, there's absolutely no incentive for companies to spend the money to respect privacy. A fine just increases the cost of doing business - meaning you'll pay even more to have them lose your data.

Re:Another day, another data leak.

[Rakishi]

Well the amount of data leaks would suddenly drop since companies would suddenly overlook it when data goes missing. After all they thought it was an empty hard drive and they'd be just as confused as everyone else when it turned out differently. In other words they'd simply not report them because reporting them would automatically give them a fine. So consumers get screwed in the end because they don't even get alerted when their data is stolen.

Not "Lost"

[mrroot]

it was possible for participants to read master data records and consumer profiles without bypassing even basic security measures. Access to the comprehensive survey results could be gained by simply changing the customer ID number in the browser's address bar.

The data was not lost, they failed to secure it. There is a difference between the two, although it doesn't make it any less of a problem. But headlines like this are misleading.

Furthermore the 41,000 number is misleading because there is no evidence supporting how many records were viewed using this method.

Solution: don't hand out your data

[nathan.fulton]

I'm not going to get into a debate over consumer and business responsibilities, but it seems to me that at a certain point, you just have to be constantly vigilant and aware if you want your data to be secure. This is a perfect example -- you don't have to take surveys. What's the benefit?

Re:Solution: don't hand out your data

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Easy enough in this particular case, surveys are largely optional. Absolutely useless in the general case, though. I don't get to opt out of government data collection and storage, opting out of data collection and storage by utilities and financial institutions is possible but for most people only in a theoretical sense.

This is a rather weak special case, I agree; but it points to no general form ability to control disclosure of your data to a variety of entities. Thus, the only effective measures to prevent data leaks have to involve the storage end(and, ideally, lots and lots of punishment). Perhaps an online "pictures, names, home addresses, phone numbers, emails, social security numbers, and CVs of people responsible for private data breaches" gallery would be in order?