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The New Way to Hack Democracy - Millions of Fake Comments Sent to the FCC

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 08 2019, @11:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the voice-of-the-people^W-bots dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A consultant working for the US broadband industry's lobbying group "Broadband for America" sent over 1 million comments to the FCC opposing net neutrality.

Many of the names and email addresses in these comments are tied to a single data breach. Here's how Buzzfeed figured out what happened.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @12:04AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @12:04AM (#904415)

    Because it only takes one bad cog in a million before your SSN (not intended to be a unique idenitfier) or other records are permanently compromised.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 09 2019, @12:10AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 09 2019, @12:10AM (#904418) Journal

    Exactly. So - we, society in general, rely on all those bad cogs for EVERYTHING. It makes no sense at all.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by coolgopher on Wednesday October 09 2019, @10:40AM

      by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday October 09 2019, @10:40AM (#904616)

      It makes perfect sense. It's the path of least have-to-give-a-fuck.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday October 09 2019, @12:56AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 09 2019, @12:56AM (#904446) Journal

    All your medical data, all your legal data, all your purchasing data, name, age, SSN, education history, on and on it goes.

    Because it only takes one bad cog in a million before your SSN (not intended to be a unique idenitfier) or other records are permanently compromised.

    Yeah, here's your scapegoat, shred it to pieces.
    Don't you mind the MBAs behind the curtain, their are only trying to do their job: maximize profit by externalizing the cost to the society. Making sense or not [soylentnews.org], it is always that cog and that cog alone that's guilty, I tell yea!

    Why do you hate capitalism? (grin)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @07:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @07:19PM (#904856)

    SSN was intended to be a unique identifier.

    Just not an authenticator, which is what they use it for.