A New York Times article has revealed the troubling fact that hackers are getting smarter and stealing more data than ever before. The amount of information stolen has been estimated to be well over 80 million. Attrition.org has reported that over 162 million estimated records were stolen in 2007. One thing is for sure, the number of data records stolen is not going to decrease anytime soon.
You often notice those commercials on television that say "We will protect your identity," right? Truth be told, those companies are just taking advantage of those afraid about the staggering increase of online identity theft. There is nothing that can be done to prevent data theft; do not believe otherwise.
The amount of compromised records have nearly increased four times than in 2006. Attrition has said that more than 162 million estimated records were compromised. This number does not likely portray the real amount of record stolen, and could be incredibly higher. People, companies, and even governments are now reactive, not proactive, with regards to data security.
Attrition's Brian Martin voiced his opinion on the matter: "It's just the nature of business, that moving forward, more companies are going to have more records, so there will be more records compromised each year," and he continued by stating that "I imagine the total records compromised will steadily climb."
Knowing that my personal information is more liable to theft is certainly not the best way to start off the year. There are methods to keeping your data arcane, but realistically, today we have very little control over our information. By simply visiting a typical website, you unwillingly surrender your information to others.
If you thought all this was bad, consider what else could happen--An article posted yesterday on PC World has revealed that there have been reports of new "ransomware" that holds your computer hostage, while you are forced to pay to have control released to you. What will they think of next? Hopefully I do not find out personally.
[Source: New York Times]
