Personal data & tanning goggles: We’ve made some bad choices
We are living in a data security high-wire act of a life, and the time long overdue to pass a national data security standard.
Getting your personal information hacked sucks. It’s a pain to deal with on every level. It causes more stress than the unnamed/unknown person felt on the set of Game of Thrones after they left the Starbucks coffee cup in a scene during episode four of this final season.
The first time my personal information was compromised was in 1994, when some doofus broke into the apartment mailboxes and opened credit cards in my name. I spent a lot of time on the phone with my bank and credit card companies trying to prove that it wasn’t me out in North Carolina buying gas, food and lotto tickets. In the time I spent on the phone with the bank and credit card companies, the said doofus had opened two more credit cards in my name. So the process was stuck in a loop for a long time. Eventually I had my employer call the companies with me on the line to verify that I was at work and in Columbus, Ohio during the dates of the disputed charges. That entire experience sucked.
During this particular time in the mid-90s, I still had a landline and my computer was simply a word processor. My cell phone consisted of one of the brick-sized mobile phones that were installed in our news cars. According to my news director at WTVN, those phones were only to be used during emergencies. We had to file our “live from the scene” radio reports using a pay phone. I do miss carrying around a roll of quarters and resting my coffee cup on the extra-large cell phone.
continue reading »
