Everybody’s private information would be worth a different amount if you were talking sheer economic value. A poor persons would be very little, a rich person would be worth very much.
Planet money did a a great segment on how these work and why America is set up this way. I learned a lot about it. You should definitely take a listen[1]. If you aren’t on Apple then search “What to do when you’re in a class action?” And find the podcast (not the summary article).
1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id2907834...
"IF YOU DO NOTHING
Get no benefits. Give up your rights to sue the University over the legal claims in this case."
A tangent, but I had the same thing with my university. I wonder how common this is, and if google is the common thread...
Paying for a wrongful action is taking reponsibility and compensating. But also "for the damage they caused" - what's the damage if the info is already out there?
> The basic problem is that they do not care about us.
True, of course, but the basic problem is different - "apology" costs more due to the way the legal system is set up, "nothing more". Otherwise you'd get your empty apologies left and right, though strang that you value that more than compensation. Empty words cost even less than $30 (unless, of course, there is a system to make them legally potentially cost more)
What I mean is that for an institution of higher education and intellectual research, the bar for ethical action should be higher. An apology (with guarantees and plans for improvement with oversight) is better than put a low price and call it cost of doing business. The damages or negative consequences are going to happen no matter what as information is already out there.
My point is not about the money that as person I would get or not. My personal private information is mine and should be protected and the law require that. If anyone consider that it is worthless or not is irrelevant. And because the affect does happen on a scale. This breach for example affect probably close to 200k or more (maybe much more).
My point is we shouldn't normalize that, just if "corruption" is widespread in a place then we should fight it not just say this is how things works. Same thing should happen here. And we should hold people responsible for the decisions liable. This way the simple decision of ignoring cybersecurity or outsource to the lowest bidder suddenly becomes unattractive.
Also I don't understand the logic is that because I got "abused metaphorically" before then it is not a big deal if this happens to me again. Why do we accept this in such case and not in others? And actually in my particular case, the university breach was probably the first breach of my personal information (others happen later). why would that change anything?
"Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam"
It is my opinion that, as with anything that can be copied infinitely for free, his (and my) personal information is worth $0.
This would include all software, every movie, song, book, photograph, and TV show available anywhere. I'm glad that the reset of society has decided to place the value of those types of things a little higher than you do.
The multi-billion dollar a year industry of buying and selling our most personal data only exists because that data isn't worthless. It's extremely valuable, even yours, and the fact that others are using it will end up costing you again and again throughout your life, often monetarily.
I realize I’m responding to an account created four minutes ago but… the output of nearly all work done on a computer meets this criteria. Is all work done on a computer worth $0 in your view?
Yes. Also, this website is very pro-piracy, which means they generally agree with me. (Saying this last part because by mentioning the age of my account it seems you're accusing me of being a troll,)
That's how people gave their privacy away to apps - they've realized this is the best deal they can get for it. Conversely, when the court tries to estimate what is the financial impact of such a leak, there's not much to base it off.
I've just finished The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and it's ridiculous how Google et Al were able to profit from these scraps we gave them. So maybe the value could be higher?
This is a public University, they likely outsource some of their IT and somewhere a data breach happened. This data breach apparently affected all employees and students/former students. The faceless "they" the author is blaming in all likelihood was effected more drastically than him.
The 30 dollars is not a payment for the data. It is a compensation for the damages, something which the author admits are likely zero, as previous data breaches already impacted him more drastically.
What should the university have done? 30 dollars seem reasonable for the damage caused.
They should have not collected any more data than they needed, deleted the data they had the instant it wasn't absolutely required, and securely stored all data they truly had to retain. It really isn't that hard to do those things, but universities (and just about everyone else hoovering up your private data) just don't give a shit about you and they know they'll get away with it when their negligence/incompetence results in a breach.
The fact that in this instance the breach may have also impacted some of the same people who decided to be so massively irresponsible doesn't change anything.
If I was (and have been) subject to a data breach, I can guarantee the damages involved are not zero. Even if no specific fraud has taken place (yet).
Time is money.
Edit: iirc that was about $750
They valued it in terms of legal fees and possible "compensation" (yay dad is dead but we got 5k), no lawsuit and your value is exaclty zero.
I wonder how much things would cost if we cut out the entire multibillion dollar advertising industry and just paid for things directly.