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from the I-wonder-if-they-track-sales-of-tin-foil? dept.
http://www.cio.com/article/2977027/intel-reveals-big-datas-dirty-little-secret.html
The article is entitled "Intel reveals big data's dirty little secret" but I read it a little bit differently.
From the article: "Companies are spending billions on tools and engineering to analyse big data, though many are hampered by one little problem: they still don't know what to do with all the data they collect."
This means that, of all the egregious breaches of personal privacy that companies regularly perform (the Target-knows-you're-pregnant-when-your-parents-don't story comes to mind), they have still only scratched the surface of making sense of your information, and using it effectively. Which means that, as Big Data gets people who actually know what they're doing, the more frightening the possibilities become, which is probably only a matter of time.
How would you feel about getting a bunch of targeted spam from divorce lawyers because your wife/husband's personal details were in the big Ashley Madison data leak, before you even heard about it? What if you were the guy who got drunk and put a profile up one time after a big fight but never followed up on it? This is why I don't have a Facebook account.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:14AM
Your points (2) and (3) are valid, but I think it's silly to argue (1). It doesn't really matter if it's illegal in your country. The law doesn't do a damn thing to stop a crimes, especially when it comes to Things Lawyers Would Prefer You Not Do With Your Computer. Example: the DMCA hasn't done a damn thing to stop people from sharing media over the internet. The notion that it will is hopelessly naive, and not solely for the reasons that (1) any country's laws don't apply universally (well, unless that country is the USA), (2) such laws are very difficult to enforce anyway in an age of VPNs, Tor, crytocurrency, etc. and (3) stupid people will do stupid things anyways, and other stupid people will reward them for it - the incentive and beneficial outcome can't be eliminated, so it will continue to occur.
In short, there's no such thing as a legal solution to a technical problem. There are legal disincentives, but while the violations are so simple to commit and difficult to enforce, they really are a silly response to these kinds of problems.
And for the record, extortionist tactics are already happening to users of Ashely Madison: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/exposed-ashley-madison-members-targeted-by-scammers-and-extortionists/ [arstechnica.com] tl;dr version: extortionists threaten email users and threaten them to pay up, otherwise they will tell friends and relatives (curated from social media) that they had an account on the site. Obviously it's illegal, but that's not stopping anyone.