Prized PII

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Prized PII

  • The goal is to get control of my financial assets so apart from direct access I would say Insurance details.

    Home insurance reveals if your house is worth burgarling and how well protected it is.

    Fitness trackers reveal your regular out of home times. If you are a cyclist they can also indicate if you have a bike worth stealing.

    Medical insurance, even that required for travel insurance, provides information where you might be vulnerable. Whether that is physical, mentally or a lever for blackmail.

    Above all your insurance purchases tell people what you value and how much.

  • I would like to see how many people are born on Jan 1 1900 in leaked databases 😀

    I think fraud is probably the most common criminal attack, so prized PII would include: email, password, full name, DOB, card numbers, national ID number, physical addresses and some details that might get asked as security questions, like mother's maiden name.

  • I received a call from a local number last week. Thinking that it could be a coworker using their cellphone to contact me, I answered it.

    It was a robocall telling me that my Medicare card was used in a fraudulent transaction in northern Texas.  I hit "1" to talk to a representative, I gave an obscene comment and hung up.

  • Thanks for 'fessin' up about the fake data use.  It's good to know I'm not alone.

    This illustrates my feeling that sometimes no data is better than invalid data.  For instance, when you compare data from multiple sources and it doesn't match, you have the additional problem of not knowing which might be valid or if both are fake.

    Recently we have one of the major credit reporting services advertising their 'app' ( I hate that term ) that purports making it possible to improve your credit score simply by using it.  So now we know exactly what their data is worth.

    Thus the massive hoards of data these days become very suspect and of minimal value.

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • Having worked in healthcare for the past 15 years, I fully understand and appreciate the need for data security and privacy. However, I do get frustrated at situations that prevent data sharing between appropriate healthcare providers and at archaic rules that treat fax machines & paper as more secure than cloud computing.

    Another frustration is when patients specifically restrict their healthcare data usage and sharing, yet have no issues posting incredible details about their healthcare on Facebook! SMH!!

  • I'm with you Steve. Like you, I usually lie about my birthday and make up random answers to security questions and store them in my password vault. Each site gets different data.

  • Aaron N. Cutshall wrote:

    Having worked in healthcare for the past 15 years, I fully understand and appreciate the need for data security and privacy. However, I do get frustrated at situations that prevent data sharing between appropriate healthcare providers and at archaic rules that treat fax machines & paper as more secure than cloud computing.

    Another frustration is when patients specifically restrict their healthcare data usage and sharing, yet have no issues posting incredible details about their healthcare on Facebook! SMH!!

    Aaron, I think fax machines and paper were actually more secure than cloud computing.  We used fax machines for decades and never experienced any security issues at all that I can remember.  The data went to one receiving number, and unless your phone line was tapped, you were fairly sure no one else got the info.  I have sent paper documents via mail or currier all my life,  with never a problem.

    On the other hand, a year ago I had my credit card data hijacked in one local city and within two days there were over $1100 of fraudulent changes, all while I was traveling across four other states.

    After my 42 years in IT, I think we are less secure now than we ever have been.

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by  skeleton567.

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • skeleton567 wrote:

    Aaron, I think fax machines and paper were actually more secure than cloud computing.  We used fax machines for decades and never experienced any security issues at all that I can remember.  The data went to one receiving number, and unless your phone line was tapped, you were fairly sure no one else got the info.  I have sent paper documents via mail or currier all my life,  with never a problem.

    The issue I have with the use of fax machines is that they are typically in a common area with easy access by pretty much anyone. They are easily readable, not encrypted (OK, some older machines tend to make them unreadable and appear encrypted!), there is no auditing on who accessed them and access controls are non-existent.

    It also doesn't help that so much health data requires patients to recall pertinent data and to fill out multiple poorly copied forms. That data is image scanned and relies on either manual entry or optical character recognition -- neither of which are very accurate. Manual data entry is still poor in healthcare with data not stored very discretely (separated into discrete or individual fields). So much data is still stored in a notes area as free-form text. As long as it can be printed, then it's considered adequate.

    While paper is no longer stored physically, most paper exists electronically as scanned images. I have seen so many times where documents were generated and printed only to be turned around and scanned then shredded. It's an issue where healthcare still hasn't let go of the paper process. It's better than it was, but still has a long way to go.

    As for your credit card experience, much of that derived from poor personnel control. It was too easy for a clerk to copy the information necessary to use the card. That has largely been mitigated by the use of self-service card swipes and chip technology. My card got hijacked once a few years ago and I was able to trace it to the store where I used it. USAA was awesome about how they investigated and handled the situation.

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