It appears 2.7 billion names, including address, social security numbers, email, birth dates, etc. have been hacked from National Public Data.
2024.08.13-National-Public-Data-Breach-27bn-Records-Leaked-on-Dark-Web-Tech-RepublicNo need for me to go into details what kind of impact this could have on people around the world. Everyone should already know the risk of so much personal information stored on cloud servers, accessible from websites. If you don’t know that risk yet, then it is shame on you since you have not been paying attention.
My question is why do we continue allowing this to happen. Why do we continue to allow companies to make money from our personal information being sold as services to other companies. You want easy access to your information and having easy access has a price. That price is your life, your credit rating, your money and your personal relationships that will be impacted should your life get impacted by this data breech.
We need to pull back on this cloud storage garbage and software as a service. We have the technology to allow you to store all your data on your computers and sync them to your mobile devices using local area networks and connecting devices to your computer. Android doesn’t work quite as simple and direct as Apple products but this is a result of your wanting choice to use your devices separately. You want Windows on your computer and Android on your phone and tablet. They are never going to play well with each other as Android is Google and Windows is Microsoft. These companies have nothing to gain by working together for the common good of you or anyone else.
Back in the day cloud storage as you know it today did not exist. When you accessed your information it was from computers controlled by the bank you do business with. They owned, operated, maintained those servers and had employees with full time jobs managing security on these servers. Today it is Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Apple iCloud and countless others where you spin up servers on these providers hardware to host all of your website and databases. You have only limited control of what you can do with them even though they all claim you can do whatever you want on your own server.
These services are all connected in data warehouses spread across the country and world. But Amazon decides when to sunset services and server configurations. Amazon decides on security updates, changes in security, etc. to protect their infrastructure. Azure and iCloud are no different or any other provider of servers in the cloud you are supposed to control.
The cloud is not your friend. It never has been your friend. Some of us have been screaming to not do this since it first appeared.
During this big change I worked at Carroll College, we had decided back in 2010 to not move to cloud and instead setup our own server racks using VMWare to manage our servers. Two people ran the network and server and all data was stored onsite, on our college owned servers and controlled by our college employees. We found it was also more cost effective than paying a cloud provider monthly based on a per minute usage rate. We could not only monitor security better, but we could upgrade and replace as we decided need and budget was there to do so. With AWS, Azure, etc. you are forced to upgrade when they decide to remove that server configuration you are using. This typically leads to more cost.
Yet, here we are again with a major data breech due to accessible information from the web, stored in the cloud. The only reason it is this way is because National Public Data decided they wanted to reduce employee overhead. The way they did was make data accessible to those who subscribe to their service allowing them to do their own background checks. Imagine this could not of happened if National Public Data kept it on their own server, never exposed it to the cloud and paid someone to do background checks and return the results to their customer in a secure message.
National Public Data may have your data and you may not be aware of them having it. You have no way to find out if they do, how accurate the information is, etc. You will find out when they finally decide to publicly admit to the data breech. You cannot expect that to happen until at least three months down the road. This even though there is already a class action law suit started over the breech due to one person being notified through credit monitoring that his information was part of this breech.
We MUST start a movement to get all this information off of the cloud. To stop companies from using you as the product they sell. You MUST become accountable for your information and stop saying it is up to them to protect your information. They don’t need all your information, period.
Yes, the economy is fine for those making money off of your information. As for the rest, the economy sucks right now.
So consider this your wake up call and start demanding more to protect yourself. STOP simply accepting those terms you agree to and start reading the damn things. Refuse to agree for once in your life. Get out of your childhood, corporations are NOT your parents, they are not going to make sure you are safe and warm. Corporations are going to rip your soul out, gut you and make billions while you don’t care.
