Long-Term Liability For One-Time Security Breaches? 119
An anonymous reader writes "Not a month goes by where we don't hear about a theft of some organization's laptop containing sensitive personal information, not to mention the even more frequent — but often kept secret — breaches into company networks and databases. It is definitely true that you should be responsible for the security of your information when you handle it, but what happens when the theft of your information is not your fault? You have handed over this information to a company or organization and trusted them to keep is secure, but they failed. They might notify you of the breach or theft, and they might even set up a credit monitoring service for you for a year or two, but the problem is that this information may be used years from now. Is it fair that you have to worry for decades and pay for further credit monitoring when they are to blame for your information ending up in the wrong hands?"
Information wants to be free (Score:2, Interesting)
But we give it too much power to allow that. A much more fundamental change is needed. Until then, long term liability is probably the only alternative. It should never cost the victim anything at all. All costs should be laid on the leaker. And "Trust no one" with your info still applies.
A nice point. (Score:1, Interesting)
Ironically, the four UK Credit Reference Agencies have announced today that you can do a web based credit check on youself for the sum of £2.00. PReviously only one of them allowed web one time (ie non annual contract) checks.
If they make it quick and also cheap then maybe more people will take responsibilty for checking their own details on a regular basis.
Posting anon for obvious reasons....
the real reason (Score:2, Interesting)
the real reason we hear more about it and hear of more of them every day is because they are the media topic of the moment, just like when northern rock was in trouble, suddenly, all the banks where in trouble and everyone took their money and caused the financial meltdown.
in short, this sort of thing isnt happening more frequently than it previously was, its just being reported on more