Corporate Data Breaches Becoming The Norm

Woke up to another computer hacking/data breaching/customer compromising, this time from Quest Diagnostics which means sensitive, personal, private medical information has been exposed to whoever hacked it, but (as always) the company released a statement that said there is "no indication" that the information has been misused. It just got me wondering what, exactly, that bullshit statement means. It seems corporate data breaches are becoming the norm but miraculously, they keep telling us these breaches are not harming customers at all. I find that unbelievable.

There is a Wikipedia page of data breaches that lists hundreds of companies that have been hacked. This is, of course, only a partial list and only includes companies whose breaches involved 30,000 or more customers records. That narrows the playing field way the fuck down, since smaller breaches in smaller companies occur "continually" according to Wiki.

The companies listed encompass multiple aspects of our lives and include (in no particular order) Home Depot, JP Morgan, Hyatt Hotels, Uber, 21st Century Oncology, Fidelity National, Hannaford Supermarkets, British Airways, Twitter, TD Bank, Walmart, The State of Texas, The Washington Post, Scribd, Sony Pictures, UPS, Domino's Pizza, Ohio State University, Trump Hotel, Monster.com, Adobe, Medicaid, The Veteran's Administration, The National Guard, Verizon, and (my favorite) ... The Internal Revenue Service.

Should we mention the Yahoo data breach that has been going on for two years and effects 1 Billion email users. This is the biggest data breach in history, and Yahoo has kept it under their hats until now ... maybe because they are negotiating a sale price with Verizon and don't want to lower their worth? ... don't know ... just thinkin' out loud here.

Customers are controlled by companies that demand over-the-top amounts of information about us before honoring us with the privilege of doing business with them, yet, they offer no guarantee of being able to secure the personal information they are collecting. Even a job application requests name, date of birth, social security numbers, work histories, past and present pay scales, personal references, places of birth, places of residence ... before we even know if we will be interviewed or what the job even pays. We often don't even know who actually owns the company we are applying to ... yet, they demand that we neatly enter our private stuff into their databases for not-so-safe keeping. Of course, their defense is the old "you don't have to work here if you don't like it", but the majority of us don't own our own businesses and are not independently wealthy, we need to work and all the companies are following suit and demanding the same information of job applicants. (We haven't even touched on employer demands for background checks, credit checks, and drug testing).

Here is a list of statements that companies use to bullshit us after the personal date they demanded from us has been stolen from them:

"...there was no evidence of fraud involving the use of customer information."

"...customer financial information remains secure."

"...no evidence that any person involved was harmed by the breach."

"...no indication that patient or customer information has been misused in any way."

"We have not received any reports of actual misuse of any information."

"...no evidence that users have been exploited malicioulsly."

"... no evidence that stolen information is being used for anything but marketing."

"... can't guarantee that it won't result in fees to customers."


And while I acknowledge that computer hackers are costing these companies lots of money to fix these breaches (issuing new cards to customers, offering free credit reports, changing account numbers, sending out notification letters to customers ... I know all this costs money), I just want companies to acknowledge that they are powerless in securing our personal information; I want them to stop demanding so much of our information; And I want them to stop telling us that we have not been harmed by having our personal information dropped into the hands of criminals.