Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

Data Thefts Triple This Year?

So says USA Today, in “Theft of personal data more than triples this year.” A few small quibbles:

• I’d prefer if Byron Acohido had said “reported” thefts
• It’s not clear if thefts or reports tripled. I suspect the reports, but proving that would be tough.

Both of those things said, it’s a good article, and helps get the word to a much wider audience.

Congratulations to the folks at attrition whose data is quoted. I think they do great work.

One other quick comment, I expect someone will do some simple math, and note that 162 is more than half of 300, and jump to the conclusion that “more than half of all Americans had their data stolen.” This would ignore that 25mm of those records were in the UK. Even if that were not the case, odds are some people have had their data stolen repeatedly, and are thus multiply represented.

Originally published by adam on 10 Dec 2007
Last modified on 10 Dec 2007
Categories:   breach analysis   Uncategorized