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Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

wsj.com

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Re: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

#291

Post by specialist »

dpark wrote: post #290
specialist wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't know how to distinguish between "me" and "about me". These discussions always go full meta. Makes my head hurt. Being a simple bear, I try to distill these paradoxes (freewill, love, death, what is art) down to something actionable. Hence my conclusion, after much thought and effort (eg securing medical records), that "I am my data, my data is me." and therefore I own it. If privacy is the ability to…

> I honestly don't know how to distinguish between "me" and "about me". > These discussions always go full meta. Makes my head hurt. You go to the store to buy a carton of eggs. The store now has data about you and your purchase. If you pay with credit card, they have a record tied to your identity. If you pay with cash, they still have a record of what you bought with your eggs, and nothing stops them from scribblin…

Well. This is where we'll disagree then.

No entity has any right whatsoever to retain any data about me, for any purpose.

Your rights end where mine begin. My right to privacy trumps everyone else's profit motive.

Edit: Scratch that. Our disagreement is more fundamental. I believe humans have a fundamental right to privacy. You don't.

Re: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

#292

Post by bmm6o »

ben_w wrote: post #211
IncRnd wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in COPPA does it say the DOB needs to be collected? I don't think that statement is true as you word it.

My memory of implementing COPPA compliance a decade ago was that DOB was an implicit requirement, the explicit requirement being “confirm they’re over 13; a checkbox isn’t good enough because they’ll clearly just lie.” (paraphrased, not quoted).

Does that mean you have to retain it beyond the initial check?

Re: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

#293

Post by ajdlinux »

specialist wrote: post #262
ajdlinux wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm torn between liking this view of personal data as property and also liking the view of Richard Stallman and the FSF that "intellectual property" is a legal fiction that we ought to resist. What does it actually mean to "own" data, and is "property" the best metaphor to represent a set of personal data control rights?

I hear ya. Pinko commie liberal me abhors the idea. Legal fictions like "property", "money", and "rights" are practical innovations that make society work better (eg more moral, greater public good). Kinda like the tech tree in games like Civilization. The books "The Mystery of Capital" and "Nonzero" influenced me a lot. Good starting points, optimistic, and more right than wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernan…

RMS' objection to "intellectual property" isn't an objection to the concept of property in general, but rather an objection to conflating the rights that are associated with tangible property with the rights that are granted by copyright law and patent law. The canonical example is the language of "theft" used by organisations like the MPAA to refer to copyright infringement - RMS would say that illegally copying a copyrighted work doesn't deprive anyone else of their copy of said work, unlike stealing a sandwich from someone.

RMS might disagree with me here, but I think the same thing can be said in this case - we need more precise terminology that accurately describes the types of infringement when it comes to misuse of PII.

Re: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

#294

Post by dpark »

specialist wrote: post #291
dpark wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly don't know how to distinguish between "me" and "about me". > These discussions always go full meta. Makes my head hurt. You go to the store to buy a carton of eggs. The store now has data about you and your purchase. If you pay with credit card, they have a record tied to your identity. If you pay with cash, they still have a record of what you bought with your eggs, and nothing stops them from scribblin…

Well. This is where we'll disagree then. No entity has any right whatsoever to retain any data about me, for any purpose. Your rights end where mine begin. My right to privacy trumps everyone else's profit motive. Edit: Scratch that. Our disagreement is more fundamental. I believe humans have a fundamental right to privacy. You don't.

I absolutely believe in the right to privacy. But I don’t think the right to privacy extends that far. I think it’s kind of unreasonable that everyone else loses their rights to record data to protect your right to privacy. This runs counter to the first amendment and makes journalism impossible. It also makes it impossible to do things like monitor the police.

Re: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

#296

Post by rhizome »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #242
rhizome wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No remorse, VZ got a discount on the purchase price based on this issue.

So the article (and Verizon?) is lying that new evidence has come to light - Verizon and v Yahoo knew when they negotiated the sale?

The new information is that it was bigger than they revealed/knew/said/whatever before. Verizon's discount was based on the earlier, smaller number.

Re: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

#297

Post by projectant »

takeda wrote: post #286
projectant wrote: post #191

Why is it that when a disaster happens numbers are gradually revised upward?

In case of hurricanes and other natural disasters most people die later due to lack of water, electricity etc. In case of Equifax, Yahoo etc it is because they simply lied to not look as bad, but then they need to provide accurate information. IMO if someone broke to a database it should be considered that all data was accessed and all data should be treated as compromised. Unless break in was to a subsystem and just…

I tend to agree.

Just come out at the start honestly and say, "All 3 billion accounts affected at Yahoo", or whatever.

I feel angry when I see the numbers gradually going up, I think one reason is because I see it like they're trying to dupe us, or "cook the frog slowly".

I understand they have to protect "shock" to their stock price, or reputation, or prevent panic, but honesty is still valuable, right?

When you have a natural disaster, surely there are experts who have already mapped out such situations and they can say, roughly 20,000 homes will be destroyed in an event like this. Wouldn't it be good to start off at a big estimate and then revise down?

I hate to think this is to some extent driven my the media's need to "drip drip" out a story, instead of giving people the truth.

Re: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

#298

Post by lunfardo »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #41
jsjohnst wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody ever said they are active users or unique individuals. I know for example I personally created hundreds of accounts on Yahoo! over the years.

Why make hundreds of accounts?

waayyyy back in the days, like 2002, Yahoo Pool was pretty big and people used bots to make many many accounts that played with themselves (in something like pyramid structure) to boost accounts score. They were usually used with proxies to avoid yahoo protections. I don't remember if i did it, but I knew how to do it. There were also 2 big auto-aimers, hell they were fun and tourneys were fun too :)

Re: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

#299

Post by specialist »

dpark wrote: post #294
specialist wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. This is where we'll disagree then. No entity has any right whatsoever to retain any data about me, for any purpose. Your rights end where mine begin. My right to privacy trumps everyone else's profit motive. Edit: Scratch that. Our disagreement is more fundamental. I believe humans have a fundamental right to privacy. You don't.

I absolutely believe in the right to privacy. But I don’t think the right to privacy extends that far. I think it’s kind of unreasonable that everyone else loses their rights to record data to protect your right to privacy. This runs counter to the first amendment and makes journalism impossible. It also makes it impossible to do things like monitor the police.

Good points.

Re: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3B

#300

Post by fny »

katastic wrote: post #281
fny wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the black market as a standard, your identity-related information isn't worth enough to be taxable.[0][1][2] The more common data you give away is worth even less. Your "gift" is akin to giving away a few grains of sand to a glassmaker who provides a free grain counting service. Now let's say you dumped a lot sand that we could value at $10K. Any smart sand-counting glassmaker will claim his once "free" sand co…

I think you have it backwards... Wouldn't black market identities be worth MORE if they weren't so easy to get? So the more we tax / regulate it, the harder it is, the more valuable they get. Win-win for everyone.

> Wouldn't black market identities be worth MORE if they weren't so easy to get?

No. It's already illegal to buy and sell identities, so black market demand for identities is likely at a maximum already. I'm just using that number as a proxy for what your clicks on the internet must be worth. I'm basically making the assumption that Value(Clicks) > So the more we tax / regulate it, the harder it is, the more valuable they get. Win-win for everyone.

Again, this wouldn't be true for black market identities, but let's look at clicks.

What I'm saying is that the click you give a way is worth too little to be taxed at all.

Say 1M click data points is worth $1K (which I think is still very generous given the amount of noise) that means each click is worth 1/10¢. Any company that sells the 1M clicks to another company will pay taxes on the $1K of income. So if you increased taxes, you would discourage them from selling your data to another company. This doesn't change your behavior though as a consumer. You still give away an untaxable 1 click at a time (1/10¢): which is not taxable as a gift because of the size of the amount (even 1K clicks is only $1) and because the company can easily argue they provided you with a service in exchange for that 1/10¢.

What you're looking for is a way to penalize companies for receiving data (i.e. for every data point you gain, you owe some $x in taxes.) This would need to be legislated since that's not currently how tax law works.

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