this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
80 points (98.8% liked)

Privacy

31991 readers
498 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 6 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Biggest lie of the year award... it's trivially easy to check how many unique SSNs are in the leak, and it's 272 million.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but according to that same article, "49% of the SSNs exposed don’t include the minimum quality to pose a risk for identity attacks". So it's more like 136 million.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Even still,

Even if only 51% of the SSNs exposed hold a minimal quality to be used in identity attacks, this translates to added risk to an unprecedented 138 million people.

Plus, identity attacks are not the only risk of this data being exposed. Stalkers, violent offenders etc. now have addresses/phone numbers and other info they can use as well. Their definition of identity attack also may not be the same as yours. Even if it's just a name and SSN, that may not qualify to them, but could be useful to someone else in a negative way.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It sounds like they just report the number they are sure of at the time and update the filing later. Very high chance the number of affected is much more then 1.3M - the number of unique email addresses alone makes it pretty clear its more.

The situation doesn't come without precedent either. It's not uncommon for organizations disclosing data breaches with US state officials to update those filings down the line as investigations into potentially compromised data continue.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

yes daddy... i trust you bro

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Well, it's right in the name - National PUBLIC Data

/s