Privacy is dead?

Kevin Ryan officially announces the death of privacy :)

[Habtom]

privacy is dead and your future lies in everyone else's hands

Dear (insert name here):
Oops! We fired this dude and it seems he helped himself to your checking account number ending in ####. Don't worry though, your account was one of millions our former employee has.

We are really sorry. Seriously, we didn't mean it. Good luck with your next credit application.

Our bad,
(insert firm name here)

[searchenginewatch.com...]

Well, I know what he is talking about.

[edited by: lawman at 4:50 pm (utc) on Aug. 15, 2007]
[edit reason] Fixed Contractions [/edit]

[Habtom]

May be not yet :)

[vincevincevince]

When it comes down to it, businesses have realised that data is where the money is and so they just throw it all over the place in the hope money comes back.

Privacy policies are much less important than corporate data handling practices. The company which reserves the right to send me marketing info but ensures that my details are only accessible to the three guys who handle those mailshots is much better than the company which states they won't be mailing me any marketing but then allows anyone in the company to pull up my personal details on a whim. Of course, we never get to know about corporate data handling.

Some guy made off with credit card numbers for the last thousand customers? That information should never have been available to him, or to anyone in the firm. There should not have been the ability to get hold of such a list, at least not without the approval of someone very senior.

Same goes for the web. Google holds a lot of information about me. I don't have a problem with that. If they use it to target adverts to me, that's fine - I'd rather see adverts which interest me than adverts which don't. But what concerns me above all else is who gets that information - whether it is only the servers which are busy customising adverts for me which are able to access it, or whether the guy who checks my Adwords for approval can see that I like to visit websites about ancient widget history.

[PaulPA]

Scott McNealy said the same thing - 8 years ago [wired.com]!

[aleksl]

Folks, be ready for a wave of phone spam

A company with a 4-letter name, starting with A and ending with T is calling their wireless subscribers around who forget to pay last month's bill. Their second question (after "your name") is "what is your account password".

No joke.