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from the ensuring-fairness-and-safety dept.
Papas Fritas writes:
"Michael Kitchen at Marketwatch reports that when companies in the US are hacked for customer information they often seem to react to such thefts with little more than a sigh and a shrug if they even report it at all. But in South Korea, they don't mess around with ID theft.
South Korea's financial-services regulator announced Sunday that three firms which suffered the theft of consumers' data last year would be barred from issuing any new credit cards or extending any loans for three months. In addition, the executives at the companies involved showed their contrition by going before television cameras and making deep bows and personal apologies. Some executives reportedly resigned over the incident, even though the alleged ID thieves were caught and arrested. The South Korean Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said the companies had 'neglected their legal duties of preventing any leakage of customer information.'"
(Score: 1) by Angry Jesus on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:41PM
Well, should we punish every retailer that suffers a data breach?
Maybe we need more creative forms of punishment rather than worry about the exact details of the incident.
I'm thinking "Scarlet Letter." Lose control of customer data, now you have to post a banner across the front of your store as large as the sign with the name of the store that tells customers what happened in a simple, standardized way.
California does something like that with respect to restaurant inspections - a letter grade must be posted in the front window that shows what score the place got on the last inspection. Anyone who doesn't have an "A" posted puts their business at serious disadvantage.
(Score: 1) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:43PM
I tend to agree. The ideal free market ("perfect competition") requires, among other things, access to information. In this view, then, truly informed purchasing decisions depend on the ability of the consumer to learn about the past failures of businesses in guarding customer data. That doesn't mean, of course, that it has to take the form of government regulation, since it is just as feasible for companies or watchdog groups to provide such Scarlet Letter data.
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