I received a letter from a movie theater I worked for as a college student for a summer job, some fifteen years after I graduated college. They let me know a da

I received a letter from a movie theater I worked for as a college student for a summer job, some fifteen years after I graduated college. They let me know a data breach had occurred exposing my social security number and (out-of-date, but still relevant for answering security questions) PII including address and telephone number. The breach vector? Legally-mandated tax records. Someone cracked the padlock on the warehouse they were stored in and made off with the hard copies. It is entirely possible that this sort of data exposure is, in the limit, impossible to guard against. Perhaps the better approach is to ask whether there's any way to make that data less valuable.