The Era of "Steal Everything"
Good comment:
“We’re moving into an era of ‘steal everything’,” said David Emm, a senior security researcher for Kaspersky Labs.
He believes that cyber criminals are now no longer just targeting banks or retailers in the search for financial details, but instead going after social and other networks which encourage the sharing of vast amounts of personal information.
As both data storage and data processing becomes cheaper, more and more data is collected and stored. An unanticipated effect of this is that more and more data can be stolen and used. As the article says, data minimization is the most effective security tool against this sort of thing. But—of course—it’s not in the database owner’s interest to limit the data it collects; it’s in the interests of those whom the data is about.
AC2 • May 10, 2011 6:34 AM
An interesting comment re data minimisation on the article:
“”The question about, for example, why an organisation asks for a specific date of birth, as opposed to an age band, is at the centre of our work.””
The obvious way is to give fake data where this doesn’t matter… One downside is all the birthday wishes I receive on Facebook on the wrong day!
This can be counter-productive in other ways as well, but yes, why on earth does the shop from where I buy spectacles need to know my date of birth???