The Members Forum

Yes, I’m pretty torqued about the flippant, wrong and error-prone ways companies play fast and loose with our personal data, our privacy and our identities.

Let’s face it – these companies are poor, very poor stewards of our information. I’ve had my identity hacked twice at my old college alma mater. That hallowed institution kept former student information online decades after I attended it and, worse, stored it via social security number. They didn’t fix the problem after the first breach. No, it took two breaches to get sort of serious about it.

I don’t trust businesses to protect our data. One retailer my family frequented didn’t protect the credit card data transmitted in its retail stores. That gaffe caused us to replace a lot of credit cards.
Firms make a lot of mistakes regarding our information. First, they assume it is their data. Legally, that might be right but not if it gets misused, hacked, etc. At that point, they realize it is our information and it is now a liability of the company. Where businesses get tripped up is that they think this information is just data when to us it our identity, our private information and something very valuable to us.

The second mistake businesses make regarding our information is to assume that it is constant. It isn’t and their records are often out of date.

The third mistake businesses make is to assume that their information is correct. Man, is that one wrong, wrong, wrong. I know lots of people who tell marketers different birth dates than their real one. They fib about their income. They do this for many reasons but I do it because I don’t want this data misused by others to commit identity theft. No one really should know my mother’s maiden name or the street I grew up on.

ZDnet has the details HERE!