It's asking for my email to check if my census data has been leaked? Email isn't even shown as a field in the leaked records. Is this site just harvesting emails?
It's 800GB, not Gb. Original title has been replaced completely and used wrong units. Original is "Report: unidentified database exposes 200 million Americans" which is far more useful.
While there could be census data, this is weak substantiation and feels more like click-bait:
> It seems that much of the data on the main folder might have originated from the United States Census Bureau. Certain codes used in the database were either specific to the Bureau or used in the Bureau’s classifications.
This data sounds like it could have been someone's copy of the voter file, the database political groups keep on every American who can vote. Versions of that file have leaked before. There's some speculation some of the leaks have been deliberate, to illegally avoid campaign finance laws.
Got a link? That sounds like interesting reading. (The explanation of how leaking a database of every voter's info helps exploit a loophole in campaign finance law, I mean, not the data.)
I don't have a link, but here's how that would work: there are strict limits (a few thousand per donor) on how much an official campaign can raise/spend. Outside/independent groups have no such restrictions (see Citizens United) - they could take a billion dollars from one donor and spend it all on behalf of one candidate. But what good would the official restrictions be if the campaigns could call the independents and say "buy a million dollars of ads for me". So there are also strict laws about "coordination". You can probably figure out the rest by yourself... But leaving the records in a place where they are "available to the public" provides plausible deniability to the coordination problem.
I am certain that this is a scam. After having worked extensively with Census data there is no place, AFAIK, that the Census Bureau collates mortgage, credit and tax data or has the capability to. The datasets listed here sit in 3 disparate organizations - IRS, private banks and credit bureaus. There exists no mechanism to collate it in one place - you would need releases from individuals to get the credit data. IRS data is almost impossible to get (cf: DJT tax records). Finally, mortgage records are public but payment history sits with the banks.
isn't the census about to start this year? this is some "same shit, different toilet" scenario. all these so-called secure government institutions or private companies or wherever this database came from. always promising a lot, and delivering little.
that's what happens when non-cybersec people are in charge of cybersec things
It's all the data that's not census data and the fact that it's joined with census data. Why is this data joined with tax information, calls to fire departments, and bike share information?
I don't think they're saying that at all. My take was that we should treat the internet as a public space even if a web pace claims that it's private.
Getting off of Facebook directly contributes to their premise that everything online will be public. If you don't want it to be public, don't put it on the internet.
My take: Unfortunately, there are some places where we pretty much don't have a choice - banks, insurance, some government, etc. And the solution to this is to incentivize these institutions to lock things down better.
I get what you're saying. Makes it seem like people are less responsible than they actually are, i.e. Like putting all their business out on social media for everyone to see
Realistic, not giving up. You can't escape them. even if you do, your friends are on instagram, facebook. what are you gonna do? social distance yourself in a camp in the woods forever?
you can mitigate, not avoid. but how do you avoid government data collection and (possible) data leaks like this?
The radical solution is to understand that everything is out there, data brokers have collected and will sell everything you do.
We need to start demanding transparency. That's it. The whole solution. No business should be permitted to have data secured. Period. Hold whatever's needed for immediate transaction purposes, everything else gets WIPED.
Credit bureaus have already exposed us all. Open their databases, no more secured storage allowed. They can dump their data or accept responsibility 100% for every field they hold onto.
Every other company can follow suit. Every government can follow suit. No more black ops, CIA, FSB, any intel security. No more separate government databases for each department or program, just one open cluster of everybody's info.
Screw corporate trade secrets and copyright and every other protection. Open every database and every server everywhere.
It'll take maybe a generation or two to adjust to the new reality, but when everybody has to have all their actions out in public, maybe everyone will start to realize that the world really is a different place.
Maybe enforcing radical honesty on everyone will help eliminate all the class distinctions, judgments, tribal bullshit when the 1%'s actions are as wide open visible as everybody elses.
Maybe data brokers wither and die when nothing is monetizable anymore.
Maybe the constant stream of corporate malfeasance goes away when all the records are there for everyone to see, all the time.
Maybe we actually start to recognize and treat the mental health issues that result in stalkers, abuse cases, stealing from the elderly, pedophilia, drug addiction, when all the dark web and every other facilitator is in the open.
Maybe a couple of decades down the line we'll have people who understand that their actions have consequences and every choice affects those around them and when lying is near impossible the whole damn planet will be more sane for it all.
Or I'm a nutcase, or too early for my time. Who can tell?
The real radical solution is to enforce ownership of any and all metadata connected to you, and to acknowledge that in the case of a breach, damage is done statutorally, even if nothing has happened due to the fact that no one has seen interest in using your info against you yet.
You should also have the right to update or modify any state stored about you at any time; after all it is yours.
