Data Breaches Affected a Few People Last Year

[Lucky]

Let's see...I am still counting..ah, there we go. Yes. Data breaches of individual's personal information last year resulted in 36 MILLION people being affected. a study shows.

Javelin Strategy & Research does an annual report. A Washington Post columnist, Michelle Singletary, says:

“You’re telling too much of your business.”

People using LinkedIn, Google, Twitter and Facebook had the highest incidence of fraud, the company said. Javelin found that 68 percent of people with public social-media profiles shared their birthday information (with 45 percent revealing the month, day and year); 63 percent shared the name of their high school; 18 percent shared their phone number; and 12 percent shared the name of their pet.

The crooks know many of us are password weary. They know many people don’t want to remember several passwords. They know that to make it easier for yourself, you choose a password you hope you won’t forget.

Think about the details of your personal life you’re posting. Are you revealing your likes, dislikes, favorite foods, hobbies? You may think these details are insignificant, but they can be opportunities for people skilled at mining such information to guess your passwords.

Do you absolutely have to tell everybody and their mama on your Facebook page or on Twitter about the latest escapade of your pet, especially if you use your pet’s name as a password or part of a password?

Then there’s your smartphone. We are increasingly carrying around some of our most sensitive personal information. The survey found that 7 percent of smartphone users were victims of identity fraud, compared with 4.9 percent of the general population.

Read more: Data breaches

[Lucky]

Another twist on this is revealed in today's NY Times. I noticed that my new Ipod had a "Contacts" icon, so I hit it, expecting to find an empty box. But no, they went into the email accounts I had added and took all of the contacts from them to put into this list.

The Times says that App makers also can use your information on either the Iphone or the Ipod. Specifically, they can take photos you have stored and appropriate them to their own uses.

The lack of interest in privacy is creating an Orwellian world, yet one that Orwell himself could not have imagined. We are cooperating, and cooperating with gusto.

Stolen Photographs

[Guest CharliePS]

We are cooperating, and cooperating with gusto.

Stolen Photographs

Not me. I don't have a Facebook, Google or Twitter account, I don't post on Linkedin, and I don't have a smartphone or any other Apple product. And I'm certainly not revealing my birthdate to the general public. The only pet names I use as passwords are of pets that have been deceased for a long time.

[lookin]

Yikes! Thanks, Lucky, for posting this.

Worth noting that all this potential info sharing pertains to Apple's mobile operating system, iOS, which runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and iTV.

As far as I can tell, it does not allow such 'sharing' through Apple computers running the non-mobile operating system.

So, I'll remain a fan of my Apple laptop, but will resist the urge to buy an iPhone until I can be sure of walling off personal information. I'll make sure my friends considering an iPad know this too.

Thanks again.

[Guest EXPAT]

If you know what you are doing, you can shield all of this information and restrict its usage very easily. But the key to that is "knowing what you are doing". I have learned to review privacy settings immediately upon joining any electronic site - social media or otherwise. No one uses my information or accesses what I want private without my knowing it.

The problem is that 90% of the people don't take the time to know what to do to protect themselves.