I didn't just invent this idea that businesses are careless with data their customers would prefer to be kept private. Basically every breach we ever hear about features this prominently. Somehow we've created an economy in which there exists a vast asymmetry between corporations who pad their books a few percentage points by abusing their position and the humans who suffer such abuses. The fact that the publicity of small bits of data about a human can cause that human massive harms is
itself a contingent creation of our screwed-up system, which benefits the giant companies whose lobbyists write the laws. It's as if someone decided we should all live under the "protect your True Name at all costs" system from the
Earthsea novels, without giving any of us any way to do that.
There's very little a customer can do to determine how or even whether her confidential data is protected. Even if she had this knowledge, in many cases she can't just decide to do business elsewhere. In many cases she was never a customer in the first place! In this context, an open database is like a shoddily constructed tall building that will collapse at the first stiff breeze. It shouldn't exist, and anyone who destroys it upon discovering it is doing humanity a service. Even if the building's owners had somehow kept the general public out (which you'd like us to assume), those owners themselves increased their danger with every bit of data added. Now, since the building has been destroyed, its owners and occupants are no longer in steadily increasing danger.