Your Personal Data is Already Stolen
In an excellent blog post, Brian Krebs makes clear something I have been saying for a while:
Likewise for individuals, it pays to accept two unfortunate and harsh realities:
Reality #1: Bad guys already have access to personal data points that you may believe should be secret but which nevertheless aren’t, including your credit card information, Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, date of birth, address, previous addresses, phone number, and yes even your credit file.
Reality #2: Any data point you share with a company will in all likelihood eventually be hacked, lost, leaked, stolen or sold usually through no fault of your own. And if you’re an American, it means (at least for the time being) your recourse to do anything about that when it does happen is limited or nil.
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Once you’ve owned both of these realities, you realize that expecting another company to safeguard your security is a fool’s errand, and that it makes far more sense to focus instead on doing everything you can to proactively prevent identity thieves, malicious hackers or other ne’er-do-wells from abusing access to said data.
His advice is good.
Clive Robinson • December 6, 2018 8:37 AM
@ Bruce,
Brian is slightly wrong on one thing,
your recourse to do anything about that when it does happen is limited or nil.
Whilst there is some supposadly “limited” things you can do, the credit and banking industries have conspired to make them worse than “nil”. That is doing them has a negative impact on the individual, thus they are “on average” better off not doing anything to protect themselves such as freezing their credit.
The old advice when faced with a “rigged game” is not to play, but when it is the only game, you might not have the choice…
That is to be able to earn a living almost invariably means having a bank account. To have a bank account usually means you are “creditworthy”. Perversely to be credit worthy you have to have been in debt regularly, thus you have to pay the credit and banking industries table stakes as a minimum.
Thus the prudent behaviour of never getting into debt counts against you as well…
I actually wanted to open a new bank account recently due to the closure of my local branch office. I went to another well known “high st” bank and on asking about oppening an account I found I was not alowed to because I did not have direct debits, credit / loans or overdrafts… The message is clear I’m not “profitable” enough…
Thankfully for some there is UK legislation that forces “Basic Bank Accounts” to be available, but these quite adversely effect your credit rating…
So my choices are stick with a bank that is of less and less use to me, get into debt and pay the price of it, or get treated like a modern day leper…