privacy protection for imbeciles
It started out strange and got stranger. Then it got stupid.
Chapter 1: The first strangeness
A few months ago I noticed an odd charge on my cell phone bill. It was for about $10 and was for a service I didn’t recognize. I called the phone company and they said it was a subscription to a media service, so I could download ringtones and things to my phone. I explained that I never do that. I did download a ringtone a few years ago (Hell’s Bells by AC/DC) but since my phone is always on vibrate, getting another seems pointless. And I don’t download other media to my phone. I’m one of those weird old-fashioned guys who uses the phone for talking – and not a real lot of that.
The representative of the phone company was very understanding and helpful. When I told him I had no idea how this service got added to my bill and I did not want it, he removed the charge and canceled the subscription. After I verified on my next bill that he had done as he said, I thought the incident was over.
Not exactly.Chapter 2: I thought at first it was junk mail
A few months later (earlier this week) I got a letter in the U.S. Mail. I didn’t recognize the name on the return address at first and nearly threw it away unopened. Regular mail boxes don’t have spam filters but we do what we can. Then I remembered that this was that media subscription thingy that had been on my phone bill. I wondered if they were trying to hit me with another illicit bill or something. So I opened the letter.
It said (in a roundabout, cryptic, “it’s not our fault we don’t really know what happened” kind of way) that they had been hacked and personal information of their subscribers had been compromised. This made me pretty mad, sinbce I never wanted anything to do with them in the first place. In the letter it offered a 1 year free subscripotion to a service that provides monthly credit reports.
I’m just going to sidestep the absolute inadequacy of that response. It’s a standard, these days. Anyway, I have been thinking about getting some kind of credit monitoring (a weird idea since, for most of my life, credit was something rich people had and I assumed I never would). So I thought I’d take advantage of it.
Chapter 3: Stupidity squared
There was a web address to sign up for the service. It was one I had even heard of before. Judging from the path on the url, I thought it likely that this company was actually marketing this sort of “after the hacking response” to businesses. Well, that’s capitalism. If you can’t stop companies from having shoddy protections in place, you can still make a buck helping them clean up the mess.
After the initial form, I hunted around the website (surprise! mostly it was meaningless marketing garbage with no value whatsoever). Then I found the link to get that first free credit report. They don’t mail them out. They show them to you online. I suppose it saves both time and money.
To generate the report you have to put in your social security number. Twice.
Now, I realize that SS numbers are how credit histories are indexed. That’s just the way things are done. There’s just one thing: Am I the only one who sees some irony in responding to a theft of personal information by requiring people to give up even more sensitive information, online (where it is NEVER safe), than was already lost?
I refused that step. Personally, I think the use of social security numbers for anything other than social security should be illegal. There should be jail time for anyone who runs a company or unit of a company that engages in that particular abuse. In this era of daily vulnerability reports, stolen laptops and continuous information leakage, using social security numbers is too much of a risk. NEVER use them.
Chapter 4: Cancel!
Not only did I refuse to put my SS# into the online form, I immediately sent them an email demanding that my subscription be canceled and explaining in clear terms why I could not use the service. An autoresponse came telling me there would be a reply within 24 hours. 5 hours to go. I doubt they’ll give me trouble over the cancellation. I’m also betting that they’ll protest against all reason and sense that the system is completely safe and I shouldn’t worry.
And I’m not worried. After all, I didn’t enter my SS#.
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