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Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

> The recent data breach made many people realize that you're always just 1 instance of bad luck away from having a bunch of aggregated personal data stolen.

There is no such thing as data stolen but from the files on your hard drive. As soon as you upload something to the Internet you publish it and have no guarantee but hope people you don't want to see it won't notice it.

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Data breaches make the news because the data wasn't supposed to be published. Just because a third party has my data on a computer doesn't mean it's public. Under your logic I've published all my banking data, whether I've used online banking or not.

All I've meant is that nobody should ever feel surprised when the data they've uploaded leaks. Now the people have realized it can leak, what amazes me is that they supposedly didn't realize it in advance. Just don't upload your naked pictures anywhere if you are going to feel seriously upset for longer than a couple of seconds once everybody sees them. That's just "a rule of a thumb". I absolutely don't mean companies like Facebook should not bother to protect users' data, I mean users should never actually take this protection seriously. The Facebook problem did not affect me because everything I've ever uploaded/written there is what I would not mind showing/saying on a TV.

> The Facebook problem did not affect me because everything I've ever uploaded/written there is what I would not mind showing/saying on a TV.

Does that include everyone who you've friended and everything they've put on Facebook, plus all the data they've inferred about you and your friends through tracking and other third-party sources?

If a company holds some information internally, and an unauthorised third party surreptitiously obtains that information, wouldn't you call that stealing?

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