It boggles my mind how free and easy some people are with their email address and passwords. I had to read this more than once to believe it. The problem started when an LA based publisher of online lifestyle and entertainment magazines opps! made a mistake and exposed hundreds of emails and passwords of people who subscribed to their magazine. The error was made by Splash Magazine Worldwide, which publishes local versions of its magazines under URLs like NYCSplash.com and LASplash.com. It came up on Monday in unrelated Google searches if the search contained two of the keywords of a person’s name that had been exposed. Larry Davies, the publisher of the magazine says he doesn’t know how this security breach occured and his webmaster is supposed to take care of stuff like this. Uh, yeah. But when something of this magnitude goes down on your watch, YOU are guy who has to make it right.
Then again… who would ever give their email password to a magazine… or anyone else for that matter? Maybe I am getting something wrong here, but I can’t imagine givng that information out for any reason. You’re just begging for cybercrime to land in your lap!
Bad enough, and certainly a concern, but it pales in comparison to the news today that TJX (which operates T.J. Maxx and Marshall stores) has has reported the theft of over 45 million credit card numbers. And that’s just this week’s data breach. Tune in next week for more.
For some reason I think people having access to my email is a greater breach than a credit card #. You can change your CC# and be inconvenienced, but someone can do a lot of damage reading your personal emails.
Yeah, it’s weird to realize that really nothing is secure!
Read Bruce Schneier’s stuff on the topic. More than just the standard tips (eg. don’t use your pet’s name as a password), he really stresses putting things in context. His stuff ranges from “Grandma would understand” to expert level.
It’s important to remember that privacy is different than secrecy. And it’s also important not to think it’s useless to protect your privacy because of all the data breaches we hear about.