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Ask HN: So what if my personal information gets stolen?

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Re: Ask HN: So what if my personal information gets stolen?

#31

Post by quanticle »

imgabe wrote: post #23
quanticle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What is the likelihood of being a target of this? Are there people out there that you expect might want to mail you an unexpected package or stalk you at your home? As we see in the instances of so-called "revenge porn", you don't have to be famous to be the victim of these tactics. It just takes one person who becomes annoyed enough to use some of these tools and then you're left with an expensive and time consumin…

> Did you have a nasty break-up? Fire someone? Do you have a business rival who would like to see your reputation ruined? If you were dating someone, worked at the same company, or even in the same industry and know the same people, they do not need a data leak from Marriott to get your address. That has nothing to do with data leaks. Maybe, maybe , you could conceivably piss off some Mr. Robot Darknet-wizard on a fo…

Maybe, maybe, you could conceivably piss off some Mr. Robot Darknet-wizard on a forum who would then spend hours combing through leaked data to try to figure out who you are so they could mail you some anthrax, but I'm going to put that at "get hit by an asteroid" level of things to worry about.

The entire point of that article I linked was that the person doesn't have to be anywhere near you to cause you real damage. The woman who posted the false allegations to the homebreaker site was thousands of miles away. Heck, if you look at instances of "swatting" [1], it's entirely possible to people in mortal danger from thousands of miles away with little more than a phone. Are the people who are doing the swatting "Mr. Robot darknet wizards"? No, they're bored viewers of Twitch streams who think getting someone potentially shot is a barrel of laughs.

I'm not going to waste my life being worried about things I have no control over.

And this is why data-breaches will remain depressingly normal for the foreseeable future. Companies know that there are zero consequences, specifically because of this attitude. If data breaches were treated like chemical spills, companies would be much more proactive and careful about what data they collected, who they shared that data with, and how they secured that data. But companies know that consumers don't care, because "It's only data," and as a result they will continue to underfund data security and make us eat the externalities in the form of having to spend time and money getting transactions reversed.

[1]: https://mashable.com/2017/12/29/swatting-death-andrew-finch/...

Re: Ask HN: So what if my personal information gets stolen?

#32

Post by warent »

maroonblazer wrote: post #18
docker_up wrote: post #16

House stealing: https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2008/march/ho... Thrown in jail: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-being-an-id-theft-vict...

What's the likelihood of either of these happening? Neither of the links provide any data on incidence of ID theft leading to house stealing or being thrown in jail, which leads me to believe it's probably extremely low. Happy to be shown otherwise though.

It's non-zero. Does it matter by how much? Why increase your surface area of attack if it can be prevented?

Re: Ask HN: So what if my personal information gets stolen?

#33

Post by tokyodude »

closeparen wrote: post #26
auslegung wrote: post #5

It depends on what you mean by 'etc'. The problem might not be in a single leak, but with enough leaks people can get access to all kinds of PII (personally identifiable information). It's important to me that my physical address not leak, I don't want people or packages showing up that I didn't ask to show up. If your important numbers (in the US that's passport, social security, and driver license) get leaked, it b…

The relation between full name, telephone number, and physical address is not secret at all. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who grew up with a phone book. The financial sector abuses some of the more obscure facts about people (SSN, DL/passport number, bank account number, address history, mother's maiden name) as authenticators. They aren't. In the short term, someone can create a lot of bureaucratic hass…

Kind of wish the EFF or some group similar would sue or push to have the law require not using that info as ID with fines for non-compliance.

It's inexcusable that someone can pretend to be you, sign up for stuff at various services, and some how that ends up being your responsibility to fix. It should be the various businesses who failed to correctly identify you and they should be financially liable, not you who had ZERO to do with it.

Re: Ask HN: So what if my personal information gets stolen?

#34

Post by miguelrochefort »

dahart wrote: post #30
miguelrochefort wrote: post #25

As long as people will think that privacy is a normal thing to seek, we'll keep using personal information and secrets as authentication methods, and those whose data leaks will suffer the consequences. What we should do is think about the post-privacy world, where all data is available to everyone. We won't be able to keep secrets and passwords anymore, but we won't have to secure them either, as we will have better…

> What we should do is think about the post-privacy world, where all data is available to everyone. Either I don't fully understand what you're suggesting, or you don't fully understand what you're suggesting. ;) Right to privacy is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for good reasons. Violations and abuses of privacy have done a lot of damage to a lot of people throughout history. So what does authenti…

I suggest that a right to privacy is a mistake. It shouldn't exist.

Unsustainability: It will only become more difficult to keep secrets as technology improves. Imagine cameras that can see through walls and drones the size of a fly.

Unenforceability: How do you make people forget information on demand? How do you delete data from the internet?

Inefficiency: We waste a lot of resources securing data. We waste a lot of resources requesting data. Allowing data to flow naturally would be more efficient.

I think it's a good idea to let "everyone else see [my] bank balance[.] Personal emails[.] Personnel reviews at work[.] Letters to [my] girlfriend[.] Late night browsing habits[.] Purchase history[.] All [my] photos along with the video feed from [my] phone[.]" However, I think it would be unfair to make the life of one person transparent in a society where the social and technical expectation is to keep secrets, although I think it would be better to make everyone's lives transparent in a society where transparency is supported.

I think the transition to a transparent society is inevitable. I also think that the later we prepare for the transition the more people will suffer. This is why I bring up the subject and encourage people to think about it.

David Brin explains it much better in his book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

Re: Ask HN: So what if my personal information gets stolen?

#35

Post by hahabrew »

imgabe wrote: post #29
hahabrew wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh im sorry what i was suggesting is hard to do? how about pervs and thier motivations.

It's not only hard, it's completely unnecessary. Most people are assaulted by someone they know in real life. You don't need gigabytes of data and a "dynamic probability schedule" to figure out that someone is at work during the day and at home in the evening, and they probably take one of 2 or 3 convenient routes to move between the two. If they actually know their target, they might even know something more like "t…

cyber stalking is very real, very prevalent, and made even easier than it intrinsically is, by irresponsible PII use and meta analysis, stalkers did this in thier head, or spent time pouring over phonebooks and dumpster documents. just ask any women that care to be here about thier experiences and a different world will be known to you

Re: Ask HN: So what if my personal information gets stolen?

#36

Post by imgabe »

quanticle wrote: post #31
imgabe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you have a nasty break-up? Fire someone? Do you have a business rival who would like to see your reputation ruined? If you were dating someone, worked at the same company, or even in the same industry and know the same people, they do not need a data leak from Marriott to get your address. That has nothing to do with data leaks. Maybe, maybe , you could conceivably piss off some Mr. Robot Darknet-wizard on a fo…

Maybe, maybe, you could conceivably piss off some Mr. Robot Darknet-wizard on a forum who would then spend hours combing through leaked data to try to figure out who you are so they could mail you some anthrax, but I'm going to put that at "get hit by an asteroid" level of things to worry about. The entire point of that article I linked was that the person doesn't have to be anywhere near you to cause you real damage…

The article doesn't say how the swatter got the victim's address. Where they somehow able to cross-reference the streamer's twitch ID with their credit report in the leaked Equifax data? If not, I'm not sure what one has to do with the other.

> If data breaches were treated like chemical spills, companies would be much more proactive and careful about what data they collected, who they shared that data with, and how they secured that data.

Actually, on a personal level, I am treating data breaches exactly the same as chemical spills. I personally have about as much influence on one as the other, which is to say, none. If a law comes along, I'll support politicians who vote for it, but that's about it. Again, what precise, actionable steps are you proposing for the average person to do? I'm looking for something besides "be scared and angry all the time" because that is as unpleasant as it is ineffective.

Re: Ask HN: So what if my personal information gets stolen?

#38

Post by hahabrew »

hahabrew wrote: post #35
imgabe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only hard, it's completely unnecessary. Most people are assaulted by someone they know in real life. You don't need gigabytes of data and a "dynamic probability schedule" to figure out that someone is at work during the day and at home in the evening, and they probably take one of 2 or 3 convenient routes to move between the two. If they actually know their target, they might even know something more like "t…

cyber stalking is very real, very prevalent, and made even easier than it intrinsically is, by irresponsible PII use and meta analysis, stalkers did this in thier head, or spent time pouring over phonebooks and dumpster documents. just ask any women that care to be here about thier experiences and a different world will be known to you

...go ahead keep voting me down, im immortal

Re: Ask HN: So what if my personal information gets stolen?

#39

Post by alanbernstein »

loteck wrote: post #21

If you're that curious, go ahead and post all of your PII in this thread and find out what happens. Something tells me you won't. The reason you won't, is the answer to your question.

Not a very useful answer; presumably OP doesn't know the reason.
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