Target hack signals that the privacy war is over -- and we lost

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...But then spreading that information around the way a drunk spreads dollar bills around the corner tavern is even worse. It's not just that our personal information -- credit card numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, PIN numbers and God knows what else, aren't solely ours anymore. It's that they are everybody else's now.

Recent news about a massive data breach at Target, one of the country's biggest retailers, has given a whole new meaning to the term "being targeted." The store has put a big red bull's-eye on many of our backs by losing track of personal information belonging to perhaps as many as 110 million customers. Anytime a retailer's systems are hacked and cyberthieves make off with data belonging to a group that could number more than one-third of the U.S. population, I think we can all agree we've got a problem.

"It's become a much more difficult job as technology advances," Paul Stephens, of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, says of keeping track of how we're being kept track of. "It's sometimes not quite as easy to discover how our personal information is being leaked."

And so we grow anxious, suspicious and a little paranoid. A month ago I would have chuckled at those having a conniption because information giant Google (GOOG) bought Nest, the maker of sleek -- and smart -- thermostats and smoke detectors. Because the devices track our movements and behavior to better control our home environment, some have said they worry about data-happy Google tracking every move we make -- literally.


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http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_24952128/cassidy-target-hack-signals-that-privacy-war-is