Privacy update

This post is gonna be real ugly, sorry. Corporations routinely tell us how very seriously they take our privacy and security. Reality doesn't match the rhetoric.

In my opinion, greed is the biggest

Link (not paywalled):

Nearly unlimited highly personal info is available for anyone willing to pay. AI provides many ways to turn that into illicit profit or undermine national security.

Hackers are using artificial intelligence to mine unprecedented troves of personal information dumped online in the past year, along with unregulated commercial databases, to trick American consumers and even sophisticated professionals into giving up control of bank and corporate accounts.

Armed with sensitive health information, calling records and hundreds of millions of Social Security numbers, criminals and operatives of countries hostile to the United States are crafting emails, voice calls and texts that purport to come from government officials, co-workers or relatives needing help, or familiar financial organizations trying to protect accounts instead of draining them.

The losses reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center nearly tripled from 2020 to 2023, to $12.5 billion, and a number of sensitive breaches this year have only increased internet insecurity. The recently discovered Chinese government hacks of U.S. telecommunications companies AT&T, Verizon and others, for instance, were deemed so serious that government officials are being told not to discuss sensitive matters on the phone, some of those officials said in interviews. A Russian ransomware gang’s breach of Change Healthcare in February captured data on millions of Americans’ medical conditions and treatments, and in August, a small data broker, National Public Data, acknowledged that it had lost control of hundreds of millions of Social Security numbers and addresses now being sold by hackers.

With no federal privacy legislation to stem the flood, national security experts fear that foreign spy agencies will keep vacuuming up everything they need to hack, recruit or blackmail officials with sensitive missions, debts and embarrassing personal secrets. “Six or seven years ago, people said there was too much data; adversaries don’t know what to do with it,” CFPB Senior Counsel Kiren Gopal told The Washington Post. “Now they have AI tools to sift through for things that are actually useful.”  

Even if all that and more comes to pass — and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s threat to wipe out the CFPB remains unfulfilled — so much data is now available about so many people that any government action is likely to have limited effect.

That speaks for itself and the standard corporate spew, “don’t worry, we take your privacy seriously.” What a farce.

And this from an article, The 7 Biggest Business Lies Ever Told:

1. Equifax data breach

Equifax is one of the three major credit bureaus in the U.S., and in 2017, it was involved in a data breach that affected 143 million consumers. Hackers were able to access personal information like credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, home addresses and even driver’s licenses. The breach happened because the company failed to implement basic security measures.

The breach itself was bad enough, but the company deliberately misled customers and withheld information. It also later came out that additional data breaches occurred, but customers weren’t informed. As a result, Equifax had to pay a minimum of $575 million as a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and 50 states and territories. CEO Richard Smith was ousted three weeks after the data breach was revealed.

The takeaway: Don’t compromise on cybersecurity, especially if your business houses sensitive customer data. If your company does experience a breach, own up to your part in it and be forthcoming about what went wrong. Lying and trying to cover up the problem will only make it worse.

Now who is it saying that we need to deregulated businesses so they can solve problems and spread prosperity, peace and happiness on the land? . . . . . Oh yeah, Project 2025, DJT, MAGA and the GOP.