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Comment by float4 | Hacker News Reader

Personally I don't care about these data breaches anymore. My:

- full name, date of birth and email have been leaked by multiple websites;

- phone number was leaked by Facebook (added it for 2FA many years ago);

- address information can be found in the public database of the Chamber of Commerce.

That doesn't make negligence okay, but at least Gorillas and Flink both gave me a €15 discount on my groceries in return.

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Phone numbers are annoying when they leak mainly because there's a risk you end up being targeted by scammers. Nano ledger leaked my contact details a few years ago and I now get regular calls from people with North African accents trying to talk me into investing into whatever crypto scams they are trying to sell. Apparently Nano Ledger owners are exactly the type of gullible fools these geniuses like to target.

At least for email, I have a spam filter that catches most of the crap.

Neither my email nor phone number are very secret of course. I actually give out business cards, have some address information on my website (because you have to in Germany). Same for my phone number and email address.

I don't understand the objective for these scammers. Surely someone who buys a hardware wallet knows at least a little bit about security and would thus be a very bad mark for a scam?

Alternatively, perhaps someone who has invested in one crypto item/scheme might be a good prospect for a second crypto item/scheme.

Someone who owns a hardware wallet is probably a much better than the average person as a prospect to target for an altcoin or NFT purchase, for example.

> targeted by scammers

I use Android's Call Screening and no scammer has ever made it to me.

What about the people who are not scammers or telemarketers that never made it to you either?

Personally, I just let unknown numbers go to voicemail.

I either get a voicemail, text message, or keep the number in my mental contact list.

Same. I have some "core" accounts that I make sure to keep very well protected, like Paypal, Gmail, Amazon etc. But the 2nd tier accounts from hundreds of random shopping websites etc I just don't expect to be kept secret at this point, there are just so many of them, and the data itself isn't particularly juicy.

I still need to hear a real world case where data breaches are harmful other than annoying spam SMS.

EDIT: re the downvotes - I guess it's ok to ask crypto people all the time about real world cases but then not to accept any questions about real world cases elsewhere...

The do give some legitimate attack vectors in the article.

Identity theft ...

Real world case: 2 friends from Brazil got their identity stolen after a governmental database leak, thieves opened up a few credit lines and now both are fighting to get their credit history cleaned up.

It's been more than a year, they have a pretty strong case to get rid of it but... Brazilian bureaucracy is slow and convoluted, it's been more than a year and neither can get any credit and get non-stop calls from banks and collection agencies.

At some point, the scammers have to kill the golden goose...credit ratings are only useful to the extent that they're trustworthy.

Lots of innocents get harmed in that process. Would rather a different solution.

Oh, totally in agreement with you there; consumer credit is toxic and dehumanizing to begin with. But I think the fraud potential is what will make it go away; smaller players will stop taking credit seriously, and government and megacorps will come up with something more invasive.

Sooo let's stop telling companies that security is critical?

Someone could have sent out 200k emails to steal money from 200k people.

I also store all leaked data just for fun. Guess what someone can do when they are out for you?

Writing an API which doesn't leak is very easy. I think it's reasonable to keep security.

A data breach at your bank, insurance company, etc. allows for much more targeted phishing attacks.

I get calls from “Visa and Mastercard customer service” because they don’t know which one I have and are playing the numbers game. “Hi Mr. ceejayoz, I’m calling from Chase about account x2093” with Chase’s 1-800 spoofed on caller ID will catch a lot more people.

Could you post your full contact details? I am looking for your name, address, date of birth, and phone number. If it isn't too much trouble, please include all email addresses and relevant passwords, your tax ID, mother's maiden name, usual prompts and answers to security questions and your SSN if in the US.

The downvotes are coming because your comment comes over as shallow.

For you or for bunch of people on HN or that are somewhat tech literate it might be a mere annoyance.

There is far more people who have email/phone number but they don't understand much more. They get scammed every week or two as I read on local news. Scammers get free information that can be used to target a person and they use it.

Just type into google "man scammed out of life savings"

https://abc7chicago.com/remote-access-bank-account-scam-phon...

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