You may have heard about a small problem Playstation has been having for last couple of days, unfortunately for them they decided to enrage some linux nerds (which is ALWAYS a bad idea) and consequently the linux nerds decided to hack into Playstations online network and steal their PSN (Playstation Network) database, the what? I hear you say... lets just say these nerds now have the following data about all Playstation users:
Their...
One must also remember that most people aren't very password savvy, so it is highly likely that the password they use for their PSN account is the same as their password for many other things.
Playstation did politely send an email out to all their customers 9 days after the intrusion warning them and you can read it here.
Now this isn't the only time that people's private information has been compromised this year, you may remember that just 3 months ago Vodafone Australia had an "unbelievable" lapse in security and published millions of customer's private information on the web for all to see.
And just the other day apple was in some hot water when some researchers discovered a little file stored on every iPhone that has been recording every place the iPhone has been since June (You can read that article here), however this information isn't public until you get a hold of that file, and apple did announce today that it was a "bug" and would be fixing it and releasing a patch very shortly.
Finally, Google last year had a bit of an issue when it was discovered that they were collecting data from unsecured wireless networks. You may remember the Australian Government making an inquiry into the matter, and google later making a public apology for the incident on their blog.
However what I find more disturbing than there being 4 major instances of privacy leaks in under a year is how little public concern there is for these issues. Sure they get featured in the news for a week or so but the next week something else happens (ie. a royal wedding) and it all just gets forgotten about, it is as if people's sense of privacy has been numbed by this new web 2.0 generation whereby millions of people put very sensitive data onto Facebook or Twitter without any thought of the consequences.
In addition the consequences for the two companies whose problems have now been resolved and forgotten about were very minimal:
"Vodafone will escape any form of punishment even if the Privacy Commissioner finds it breached privacy laws that may have affected millions of customers.
The telco is likely to face the same fate as Google Australia, with an apology on its blog the only consequence for conducting what Communications Minister Stephen Conroy described as possibly the biggest privacy breach in the Western world."
(Australian IT)
The public should have a greater concern for privacy especially considering how easy it is now to access data from the internet. People should be more aware that any information that is put on the internet is potentially up there for all to see, even if they try to take it down...
Even this week you might have seen that a couple have decided to have an internationally filmed wedding where potentially billions of people will watch it, their sense of privacy must be so poor...
Having said all that I do think we sometimes completely overreact about the data that is being collected about us, especially data that google collects, and while you wait for my next post you should check out one of my favourite xkcd comics about privacy: http://xkcd.com/792/
And if you are an unlucky playstation user that now no longer has any privacy or a multiplayer network to play on then you should check out this guide of 5 things that you should be doing while PSN is down, I especially like the "Win a real trophy" idea...
Petey
I assume you also saw the post that has Android phones also storing your location.
ReplyDeleteOf cause I think the Liberal party is behind all of this. :) (I beat Anonymous to it this time)