The Plural of Anecdote is Anecdotes
Over at Lexology.com, there’s a story which starts:
Medical-data blackmail is becoming more common as more health care providers adopt electronic health records systems and store patient data digitally. (“Hackers demand ransom to keep medical records private“)
The trouble with this opening sentence is that it has nothing to do with the story. It’s a throw-away assertion. There’s no evidence offered up. There are lots of alternate hypotheses, such as more health care providers are talking to their attorneys about blackmail. Maybe it’s true, but the article totally fails to make a case.
Agreed. Other than a few cases involving outsourced data almost a decade ago, this incident is only the third one I’ve heard about in the past four years. That doesn’t constitute a growing trend in my book. I suspect that there are actually main more attempts than we find out about, but unless entities disclose, such headlines seem like FUD.