![]() ![]() Medical exams? As electronic medical record requirements spread, hospitals and doctor’s offices are outsourcing them to specialists. Let’s go back to what we now consider private. So, again, we have a number that at one point was private and meaningful and is now close to pointless. It could simply mean that one of the umpteen million e-tailers that had that number has been breached. It doesn’t mean that you have the actual card. The original rationale? Because it would never appear on a receipt, merchants online could ask for the CVV as proof that the person was holding the actual card, as opposed to a receipt that he or she had fished out of someone’s trash.īut now that e-commerce sites routinely ask for the CVV, that data no longer means anything. The CVV didn’t appear because those numbers weren’t raised. This goes back to the days when payment cards were run through a sliding mechanism that left an imprint on a carbon paper receipt. Those are the numbers on the back of Mastercards and Visas (on the front for American Express) that are not embossed. ![]() In the world of online payments, we have a similar example: The CVV. And given how remarkably difficult it is to change one’s Social Security number, it is a huge privacy and security problem. Impact: In 1970, asking for a Social Security number could be a reasonable identity verification. ![]() Then companies and schools started asking for them routinely and they became a makeshift identification number.Īs that data became easy to find in web searches, Social Security numbers were no longer private. Years ago, Social Security numbers were considered sensitive and private. Often, we have no one to blame other than ourselves. But what is true is that a massive number of things that could be considered private 20 years ago no longer are. It’s often been said that privacy doesn’t exist anymore. This is why we need to rethink privacy expectations and make them more realistic. Once data enters the internet, it will be accessed and logged and stored and analyzed and compared with a billion other pieces of data. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously.”ĭata is no more controllable. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Restricting access to private data - think tax returns or medical exams - is a very different issue.ĭata is sort of like the dinosaurs in the movie Jurassic Park as described by mathematician Ian Malcolm when he pushes back against park management for attempting to control dinosaur breeding: “The kind of control you’re attempting simply is not possible. I understand the sensitivities involved, but tools and data that are generally accessible to people can’t be put into a box that’s off-limits to government, corporations or law enforcement. Then there was the dust-up when law enforcement started using a social media monitoring tool to pursue alleged criminals. And if the court had gone the other way, are we supposed to believe that thousands of government employees would have simply done without the data? A European Union court ultimately told the government it could go right ahead and save the addresses. In Germany, a country where privacy is generally valued much higher than in the U.S., a mini-uproar erupted when the government was asked to not store the IP addresses of web visitors. Two recent events make it clear how such attempts are futile. If data can be accessed, it will be used and retained, and no rules or laws to the contrary will make any difference. But it has to be acknowledged that many restrictions - you’re not allowed to save this or to track that - are simply not going to work. Privacy is a critical area for IT, and as social media and mobile extend potential privacy invasions into areas once considered safe, reasonable safeguards must be taken. ![]()
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