Comment by adev_
4 hours ago
> Identify theft is annoying, but it rarely has severe effects.
I disagree. It has already severe effects.
- The fact we are facing so many data leaks made easy for malicious agent to cross and mix data sources and setup much more evolved and convincing scam scheme.
It is now trivial to get name, address, birthday and phone number from a data leak and crossed check that with the login id (email) used for lets say, a financial service and setup a convincing phone scam on that.
Many dubious actors are already doing that. One acquaintance of mine (working in ITsec ironically) got trapped by this exact scheme last week.
- It is trivial to harvest data leaks for online telemarketing, robot calls and any other abusing commercial practices.
- We are heading to a situation where any wierdo or/and stalker with a bit of tech knowhow can rather trivially extract a physical address out of an online profile. That is a giant opened door for harassment and physical insecurity for the most vulnerable of us.
Thats not just "nerd concerns" and the strategy "everything you do online is public" does not work. Many website will request my personal physical address for trivial matters like billing or delivery. That can not under any mean be considered public data.
> Many website will request my personal physical address for trivial matters like billing or delivery.
Some will even require it for no actual reason at all.
Do I need to give my living address when I buy a sandwich? Then why would I need to when buying an online service?
Similarly, fast foods nearly all have these automated kiosques. They don’t need any info. So why do they require an email address when ordering to the table through the app, while in the restaurant?
They don’t need them. They just demand them because they can and everyone online is used to giving them without a second thought.
I can’t wait for personal data to become digital radioactive waste.