Comment by Fnoord

10 hours ago

A Danish privacy activist (not a protected title) using Google Nest.

On a second thought (addendum), ...

1) Publishing PII like phone number of a high profile person in your society is causing them harm since they obviously put effort into not having such out in the open. (e.g. I can find anyone's phone number in my country via leaks. No big deal... but I shouldn't publish such. I shouldn't possess such data either.)

2) SSN is a different category of PII. Publishing this of anyone is an invitation of harm, even more so of a high profile person in your society.

It is akin to inviting people to DDoS a website, or blocking them physically access to exit their house. That kind of thing. Except that on the internet, anyone can abuse this. Even people (including criminals) in foreign countries, residing in hazardous jurisdictions (e.g. Russia).

Either way, what's the point of publishing such information? When German activists published the fingerprint of a German minister, they were making a point. They got the fingerprint via a glass of wine, but the interesting point is that a fingerprint cannot be revoked. It isn't used to authenticate a password, but a user(name). It should therefore not be used as single factor.