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120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

forbes.com

141–150 of 163 posts

Re: 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

#142

Personal data right now is considered an asset. It needs to be seen as a liability. Maybe the solution is a data tax. You pay a set amount every year for every piece of personal data you have. If you buy personal data from another company, you still have to pay the tax for the data you acquired. If you have a breach of data, your tax goes up for a period of 10 years. In addition, every piece of personal data needs to…

You're going to make the cost of doing business prohibitively high.

Re: 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

#143

Personal data right now is considered an asset. It needs to be seen as a liability. Maybe the solution is a data tax. You pay a set amount every year for every piece of personal data you have. If you buy personal data from another company, you still have to pay the tax for the data you acquired. If you have a breach of data, your tax goes up for a period of 10 years. In addition, every piece of personal data needs to…

You're going to make the cost of doing business prohibitively high.

Good. If your business depends on collecting tons of personal information from people, and storing it in a way that puts innocent people at risk, your business does not deserve to exist.

Re: 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you heard... It's all about blockchains of blockchains these days. Gives you ln(n) time instead of n. There is also interesting work in leader follower blockchains.

I assume they also give you n^2 of global energy waste instead of n...

I didn't think of that but yes that is an added benefit

Re: 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

#145
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, apparently there are about 125 million households in the US. I didn't realize it was that close.

I am very curious to learn what steps those 5 million households had to take to keep themselves off that list.

Probably living in extreme poverty is sufficient.

Re: 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

#146

I imagine this scenario now in EU, where the Smart Meter Gateway will enter millions of households, tracking the electricity consumption. Where goes this data? Who will use this information?

Somewhere there is a law enforcement organization that's drooling over the thought of automatically generating a list of suspected grow-ops by cross referencing power usage with marketing demographic information and automatically applying for a search warrant.

They'll probably stop doing it after they kick down the door of a day-care in a rich neighborhood and only find hot glue guns and those beads you fuse with an iron.

Re: 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

#147
How is it that addresses and phone numbers are not considered personal identifying information???

Forgetting for a moment the fact that with even a few data points on someone it is getting easier and easier to cross reference other data sources and de-anonymize almost anything - but address and phone numbers are so directly and easily tied to real people this seems like a massive oversight in current regulations on "personal identifying information".

Re: 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

#148

Personal data right now is considered an asset. It needs to be seen as a liability. Maybe the solution is a data tax. You pay a set amount every year for every piece of personal data you have. If you buy personal data from another company, you still have to pay the tax for the data you acquired. If you have a breach of data, your tax goes up for a period of 10 years. In addition, every piece of personal data needs to…

Currently it is illegal to sue a company for personal harm that results from a data breach.

We could start by repealing that nonsense.

Re: 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

#149
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very curious to learn what steps those 5 million households had to take to keep themselves off that list.

Probably living in extreme poverty is sufficient.

Not having a permanent mailing address, utility bills, or a bank account would do it.

Re: 120M American Households Exposed In 'Massive' ConsumerView Database Leak

#150

Personal data right now is considered an asset. It needs to be seen as a liability. Maybe the solution is a data tax. You pay a set amount every year for every piece of personal data you have. If you buy personal data from another company, you still have to pay the tax for the data you acquired. If you have a breach of data, your tax goes up for a period of 10 years. In addition, every piece of personal data needs to…

Instead of a data tax, I like the idea of mandatory data insurance, with payouts to users whose data is leaked/stolen. If your company has shitty security, or a history of leaks, your data insurance provider will charge out the ass. The financial math has to clearly be on the side of it being more profitable to practice proactive security.

And since no insurance provider enjoys compensating millions of people, it would be very likely they would fiercely fight those responsible for the leak.
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