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Baby, Baby, Baby, Where Did Our Privacy Go?

funkaoshi

16:15 / 23.04.05

Two tech-savy schools, Carnegie Mellon (home of CERT no less), and Berkeley, have had the personal information of their students stolen quite recently. Berkely lost an important laptop, while Carnegie Mellon’s computer network was breached. These are just two of many recent reports of such crimes. LexisNexis and a California Medical group are two other stories that should make you feel safe and sound knowing people are working hard to keep your personal information safe. What’s a person to do when even the US government has no issue with stealing a woman’s identity? There are some people with ideas on how to mitigate identify theft, what are yours?

alejandrodelloco

02:15 / 24.04.05

Refuse to automate your life, for one.

funkaoshi

14:45 / 24.04.05

Well, the problem is that it really isn't that simple. Well, unless you're willing to live in the woods or something. From the examples above, there is no 'i'll just use cash' way to get out of giving up all this information about yourself. If you want to go to graduate school at Berkeley, you have to give them all this information about yourself. If you want to see a doctor, ditto.

Tom Coates

11:25 / 25.04.05

Realistically an awful lot of the upcoming developments in technology require us to be able to point to real-world objects or concepts (or people) in data. And the more that systems are interconnected, the more powerful they become - you only have to look at the internet to see the power of the network-effect.

Fundamentally we don't seem to me to be in a position where we can stop people developing technologies in these directions. The question we should be looking to answer is a really fundamental way - how do we build systems that are decentralised, that are open and that give the individual some control over how information about themselves is handled. Maybe rather than having a centralised database, we should be looking at people more like creators of webpages, who can put up information into a public domain and allow that information to be spidered and organised in some way.

nedrichards is confused

16:06 / 25.04.05

I'd have to agree with Tom on this, decentralising identity seems to be a good best guess as to what the long term solution to this might be. It's in this context that the Liberty Alliance stuff becomes more interesting than just your usual huge 'enterprise' software sillyness.

alejandrodelloco

18:04 / 25.04.05

I was just being a smart-ass, but seriously, just be careful to encrypt sensitive info, shred junk mail, and avoid general shadiness.

nedrichards is confused

19:59 / 25.04.05

Yes, avoiding general shadiness is a good point, 419 letters being a fine example. Don't be greedy.

snowgoon

11:28 / 28.04.05

OK, so you(I)'ve been in the system now for some years. What then?

If there was a centralised system I could nix any info I didn't want easily, as it is I have to go round, what, 50 different agencies/companies?

The "don't be in the system" argument is moot as far as the majority are concerned and, as the publicity for this kind of thing grows the solution needs to reflect reality.

So, let's extend this out to ID cards. How do they affect our privacy? If that utopian centralised system was in place, and we could USE the ID card for things that matter to US, would there be such a stooshie??

Kevin Marks

05:21 / 01.05.05

"Identity theft" is a fake crime made up by credit companies to blame the victims for their own insecure practices, which make life easy for fraudsters.
'Mother's maiden name' indeed.

dj kali_ma

18:35 / 02.05.05

Let me tell you about my mother.... :::BLAM BLAM:::

Love,
Aphonia

funkaoshi

14:23 / 05.05.05

For those interested in the ChoicePoint security breach (where they sold private information to less than legitimate businesses), CSO magazine has a great article: The Five Most Shocking Things About the ChoicePoint Debacle.

I've noticed some people think the that by being careful with your own data you can some how protect yourself. This is information about yourself that is not within your control. I can shred my documents, encrypt all my communications, and do all sorts of paranoid things. It does me no good if other people with my information aren't so carefully. (The weakest link is the link that will end up being exploited.)

There definitely needs to be some sort of government involvement in regulating what is done with information on us.

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