[privacy] privacy Digest, Vol 10, Issue 22

[Brian Loe]

On 1/24/07, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu <Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 06:11:34 CST, Randall M said:
> > Has this always gone on and we never heard of it? Or is it really becoming
> > so prevalent now?
>
> It's been going on for a while - corporations and government agencies have
> *always* been losing laptops since laptops were invented.  The only thing
> that has changed is that it gets admitted to more often now.  Before, if
> a laptop with sensitive data got swiped by a crackhead who fenced it to
> supply their drug habit, it was just ignored because the chances of the data
> actually getting found/used was low.  Now that the fences are getting
> smarter and potentially shopping any found data around, the threat model
> is different....
>
> (Of course, I'm handwaving - does anybody have hard data showing that the
> fences *are* getting smarter, or that the crackheads are actually targeting
> laptops with potentially interesting data (which requires identifying a
> particular person with a laptop)?
>

No, there are no fences. There are dirtbag pawn shops and there always
have been. "Car shoppers" - an old street term for thieves who "shop"
cars for things to steal - do not have fences. In fact, forget the
pawn shops, most of these guys sell to people they know, who are often
"legitimate" people who will either use the laptop themselves or sell
it on ebay (none of whom give a rats ass about the data....yet!).
Hollywood isn't reality...

I know personally that this has gone on for a long while, and would
bet that its gone on for as long as there have been portable
computers, but the reason we're hearing about it more now is that many
or most are REQUIRED BY LAW to notify customers of possible breaches
these days.