from Hacker News

Ask HN: What if we didn't care about data breaches?

by morphicpro on 1/30/24, 5:13 PM with 3 comments

So many times I've seen headlines that claim N people's records have been exposed via X data breach.

This created a thought I've never really had before.

What if there was no consequences for gaining access to data?

Or put another way.

What if we didn't care about data breaches?

For the most part the only reason we care about data breaches is because identity and authenticity. If society found a more convenient way to address the concerns of identity and authenticity via means that can't be exposed by persisted data or need to be encrypted than there would be no consequences for data breaches.

I get this is like saying "what if money had no value" But to that same point, think about the diffidence between printed bills vs a credit card. I guess this is a closer analogy to my thought. At the end of the day its the medium and that medium's application that is the problem in most cases.

  • by Shinmon on 1/30/24, 5:19 PM

    First of all, we don't really care, do we?

    Second, it's not just identify and authenticity.

    There are data breaches that leak a lot more information than just an identity. Sometimes the mere fact that your identity is in a breach is problematic already.

  • by stop50 on 1/30/24, 6:43 PM

    World war 2: Germany invaded Poland and was preparing to invade France. To !circumvent the france defense they attack from belgium, since the defense is weaker there. They implement the same massmurder system they implemented in Nazigermany. Luckily the Dutch already collected the data they needed, so they could start the massmurder more easily. That is why we need to take care about our data.