[privacy] 93,754,333 Examples of Data Nonchalance

[Dude VanWinkle]

On 9/25/06, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu <Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:03:04 -0000, Fergie said:
>
> > Less than two years into the great cultural awakening to the
> > vulnerability of personal data, companies and institutions of every
> > shape and size - like the data broker ChoicePoint, the credit card
> > processor CardSystems Solutions, media companies like Time Warner and
> > dozens of colleges and universities across the land - have collectively
> > fumbled 93,754,333 private records.
>
> And given that most of the breaches have been in the US, it's safe to guess
> that most of the 93M have been US resident's records.  With the population
> sitting at just under 300M, that means a 1 in 3 chance your stuff has
> been swiped.

err not really. Their math is FUD tainted. You have to at least
subtract the 26 million they included with the VA laptop that was
recovered.

I am not saying that people dont mishandle data, or that the entire
system isnt flawed to begin with (I doubt very much that FDR was
concerned about Information Security), just that they drummed up the
numbers a little.

-JP