Compromised Personal Data, and What To Do About It
Thirty-seven states, along with the District of Columbia, require businesses and institutions to publicly disclose incidents of data loss in which personal consumer information is compromised or leaks from databases. According to the AP, two watchdog groups, the Identity Theft Resource Center and Attrition.org, respectively count 79 million reported compromised records in the U.S. and 162 million world wide for 2007. And those numbers are rising fast. ITRC counted reports of 20 million compromised records in 2006.
California is one state moving to combat the steady uptick in digital identity theft, which compromised data enables. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently approved legislation creating the California Office of Information Security and Privacy Protection. The office will coordinate prevention activities between law enforcement, businesses, advocacy groups, and consumers. Groups like Cal-PIRG want to give consumers more control over how they allow companies to handle their personal information.
The more control consumers have over how businesses handle their personal data, the better. And as Peter Swire has argued here on Science Progress, consumers need sensible, accessible, and intuitive privacy choices—much what they expect from the goods and services they buy.
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