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Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

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Re: Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

#201

Post by ijidak »

raarts wrote: post #189
hydrox24 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courts will always base their decisions on case law, and I suspect that you can reasonably expect a certain kind of GDPR case law to arise, given what the standing case law is already.

The EU has a civil law system where the US has a common law system. Common law gives judges an active role in developing rules; civil law is based on fixed codes and statutes. Case law is not binding in the EU.

Wow. Thank you for explaining that. I've never fully understood the distinction between the two.

Re: Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

#202

Post by vertex-four »

delroth wrote: post #191
vertex-four wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link to this? Searching for "CNIL", "75,000" and "2017" doesn't turn up anything useful.

https://www.lexpress.fr/actualites/1/styles/protection-des-d... tl;dr: a non-profit got fined 75K€ because their website leaked 42,562 private documents from their users. Anyone could modify numbers in the URL and read other users' documents. The documents included passports, tax information, identity documents, and more. EDIT: better source: https://www.cnil.fr/fr/sanction-de-75-000-euros-pour-une-att...

Oof, I can see why then. On the other hand, if you're not storing people's passports... is this really something you should be worried about? And shouldn't somebody who's intentionally storing thousands of passports be required to implement basic security practices?

Re: Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

#203

Post by usermac »

This always makes me think that if we had a semantic web that this would be unnecessary. I know, I know, that's unrealistic but hear me out. It means that you wouldn't have to hoard data such as in this case. Yeah I know, terrible idea but I think about this logic.

Re: Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

#204

Post by severine »

dredmorbius wrote: post #104
fouc wrote: post #18

> "I don’t know where the data is coming from, but it’s one of the most comprehensive collections I’ve ever seen" > Each record contains entries that go far beyond contact information and public records to include more than 400 variables on a vast range of specific characteristics: whether the person smokes, their religion, whether they have dogs or cats, and interests as varied as scuba diving and plus-size apparel.…

False or misleading information can also be harmful, if widely disseminated. Birth certificates. Creditworthiness. At the age of 54, Sigmund Arywitz was a healthy American success story. He was making $30,000 a year as executive secretary and treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, his family was sound, his reputation high on all counts, and he had just finished eight prestigious years in Sa…

> See also: Cardinal Richelieu.

Context on the reference: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/23785/what-did-r...

Re: Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

#205

Post by Rjevski »

jacquesm wrote: post #179
astura wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was discovered by a white hat; he didn't publicise a data dump.

Let's hope they were the first to discover it.

I hope they were not and this data ends up public.

I’d love to search this database for the details of top people at privacy-violating companies and publish them.

Re: Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

#207

Post by levosmetalo »

tjoff wrote: post #139
hhh wrote: post #4

With reasonable verification, anyone confirmed to be a part of this breach should be given access to the data, if only for good will. It's a sad state to see that the recklessness (or incompetence) of one entity, and at that a private one, can quickly become a domino in a chain that ends in toppling a person's privacy. They advertise themselves as having the most accurate data (why wouldn't they advertise themselves…

With GDPR that would be your legal right.

... if you are European resident.

Re: Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

#208

Post by JoeAltmaier »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #206

It's interesting that we consider this a leak only when the marketing firm loses the data. If we lived in a just society we would consider it a leak once the marketing firm got the data.

And what really changed? They used to sell the data, right? Now everybody has it (instead of only a percent). Is that worse?

Re: Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

#209

Post by JustSomeNobody »

Fortunately, at this point, with all the leaked data, it's nothing really new that others don't already have.

Seriously, though, this is just getting out of control. I'm almost to the point of writing my representatives. I don't think the industry can adequately self-police.

[Edit] By "industry" I mean any company who handles my personal data.

Re: Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records

#210

Post by wu-ikkyu »

rectang wrote: post #151
stef25 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are in some cases (in many cases actually) perfectly allowed to collect user information and from a business perspective would be stupid not to do. Every time you use a loyalty card that information is collected and yes it's used to understand you and perhaps even influence you, to buy certain products. Buying diapers? Have a look at these baby toys. Most people will throw their personal information out the…

> The problem here is the leak, not the fact that it exists. The fact that the information exists guarantees that it will leak. If not from one company, from the next. Personal information is like hazardous chemicals.

>Personal information is like hazardous chemicals.

Big data is munitions, ammunition that is loaded into algorithms which are like machineguns that can fire at the speed of light millions of times across the world in under a minute.

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