Equifax says that personal details it held for 143 million U.S. consumers have been stolen by hackers.
We are obviously going to see more of that in near future. Large personal data aggregators, like Equifax, Experian, global banks and large healthcare service providers are among the most attractive targets for data thieves. Unlike social media services like Facebook, which typically use complicated and highly distributed systems to store and access user accounts data, smaller aggregators like credit agencies or banks use far less sophisticated databases, making them much easier to steal.
But what is more important, the theft implies a worrying conclusion – any personal data that played a role of a virtual ‘fingerprint’ by being strongly and privately bound to a particular person, stops being so. Our social security numbers, mobile service providers and monthly spendings cannot be relied upon any more – at least to the extent they used to in the past. This hack is a precursor of a forthcoming fundamental change in the whole ecosystem of authentication and identification of citizens basing on their personal data.