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The horse is out of the barn. We need to make the data itself worthless. There's no getting it back.
by ams6110 9y ago
The horse is out of the barn. We need to make the data itself worthless. There's no getting it back.
- bogomipz 9y agoHow would we go about making the data worthless?
- freeflight 9y agoOne, rather drastic, approach would be making the data of everybody freely available to everybody, think post-privacy society. At least that's how I originally imagined this Internet thing to play out as, too bad it took the exact opposite direction.
- bllguo 9y agoI like drastic, because what else is going to spur the powers that be to revamp how we approach identification? Something dramatic like this is almost necessary at this point. Equifax was huge and yet what reforms have we seen? Is anything even in the pipeline?
- freeflight 9y agoI fear this will take the usual course of action: It's gonna get worse until something really bad and really large scale happens, only then will people realize the need to act, but then it's usually already way too late.
- murph-almighty 9y agoSo Equifax?
- simias 9y agoDid the general public really feel the consequences of that data breach personally yet? Not to go all Godwin but when the parent mentioned "something really bad and really large scale" my mind immediately went to the holocaust and other genocides. Can you imagine a totalitarian regime having access to this type of tracking data? It's pretty chilling.
- jay_kyburz 9y agoyeah, I'd prefer the data were simply out there, at least average people would know and understand what is known about themselves.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoAs others have said on other comments on this article, everyone has to stop using that data (all of it) for purposes of verifying that you are who you claim to be. My initial thought was "good luck with that", but maybe, in an ironic sort of way, these breaches are going to force that to happen. "You say someone opened a credit card in my name, and you want me to pay for what they charged? What data did they use to open the account? Um, yeah, have you heard about the Experian breach? So you know that the entire internet has that data about me? Yeah, good luck collecting, suckers." If that holds up in court (at not too great expense for the party being sued to pay the debt that isn't theirs), then financial institutions (all of them) are going to learn very quickly not to rely on that information for anything.
- ryandrake 9y agoIf you're a bank, if someone opens an account in my name, it should be your problem, not mine. If you're going to tie something to my identity, you need to require more proof of identity than information that is practically public knowledge (social security numbers, addresses, former addresses, etc.).
- bogomipz 9y ago>"Yeah, good luck collecting, suckers." They don't have to collect, they just ruin your credit and make your life difficult. That's what they do now.
- PeterisP 9y agoYou can make it illegal for them to do so; many countries require lenders to ensure that they clear any marks on your credit if the claim is disputed and they can't prove it's you; saying "Bob took money from me and didn't give it back" is clearly libel if they can't prove it's true. You don't even have to go to court for that; you simply dispute it and either it goes away or they charge you with fraud if the prosecutor believes that they have solid evidence that it's really you and you're intentionally scamming them. There are options that have been tried, they're just difficult for USA to adopt because of reasons mostly tied to the weirdness of identity and IDs in USA.