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Comment by Proziam | Hacker News Reader

It only takes a company messing up exactly once, and the damage is catastrophic.

Everyone gets their social security number leaked...identity thieves have a field day.

Everyone gets their medical history leaked...insurance companies suddenly find another edge against the consumers.

Everyone gets their texts leaked...scammers now have blackmail against anyone who ever got spicy with their significant other.

Huge companies have been exploited before, and they will do so again and again. The only long-term winning strategy is to not let them have your data in the first place.

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Nearly all SSNs have leaked by this point. The US needs a cryptography based ID system. That way each identification event is distinct, and each company gets a different (irreversible) derived ID for a person.

On that larger point I'd agree that companies should not have PII data they don't need.

You prove my point. Most of those things have happened, many times.

Everyday there's a breach, and yet the world goes on.

And the lives of certain innocent individuals get ruined in the process. I guess it's fine as long as it's not you? "They didn't come for me..."

That’s the precious bodily fluids paranoia I’m talking about.

Nobody is coming for anyone. [Again doesn’t apply to spies and dissidents]

Systems can fail and that can mean ruined lives. However, that’s only part of the equation. There were actually anti-automobile societies in the US and Europe who opposed cars for safety reasons.

"Nobody is coming for anyone" is just wrong.

If there's an edge, people will use it. Car manufacturers share data with insurance companies[1], which can impact drivers' insurance rates or lead to coverage denial.

Do you believe the same thing will never happen in healthcare?

Do you believe that sophisticated criminals won't engage in large-scale fraud attempts? In 2021, about 23.9 million people (9% of U.S. residents age 16 or older) had been victims of identity theft during the prior 12 months.[2]

You haven't been hurt by this sort of thing, which is great for you. But millions of other people aren't so lucky.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...

[2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/victims-identity-th...

"the world goes on"

This reeks of an answer given by someone who simply hasn't been impacted by an of this yet - I'm sure for those who HAVE been impacted the world didn't simply "go on" it caused real stress, problems, issues for them.

, sucking.

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