
My topic for this Post went awry, with several ongoing
stories causing my research to jump track.
My interest started with the Sony hacking, and research began with how
the term Hacker had morphed from one of respect to one of derision. But before I could develop that, the first
jump from the tracks was concern about the Target leak, quickly followed by my
old company Anthem, which faces possible penalties for compromising 78 million
of its members. Then, almost before I
could adjust the article, President Obama called a summit with a proposed
agenda to get some international agreement of data control.
I was getting distracted. So I changed tack.
What was the conclusion I thought, to all this
concern? Was there some system, such as
a vault for your passwords, that would make your data secure? Were there sites that were verboten from visiting if you
wanted to keep your data from being compromised? Would camouflage suffice? Hillary might have thought so, avoiding the “secure”
Government server for her personal email server.
I began to look at what data I had that might be
compromised to my financial or personal disadvantage.
Very little of a medical nature, with the single
exception that I have a Living Trust that has a DNR clause, which I carefully
hide on my medical record before I have any surgery that will be done without
me being conscious. Although I have some
medical conditions, one for which I am being currently treated, I am not private
about the conditions nor the possible outcomes of treatment.

I have more financial ones that I can enumerate,
including checking and savings at several banks and credit unions. My investments are, for the most part, in the
hands of activities like Ameritrade or e-trade.
Similarly, are the stocks and bonds of my portfolio. Rightly or wrongly, I rely on the security
these entities provide, and probably am not as concerned about changing my
passwords as I should be.
The truth is, I am hardly suspicious about giving my
credit card to an unshaved restaurant server, or ordering from Amazon. I carry few credit cards, but those I carry
are in my wallet, which on occasion I have left somewhere. I have received half a dozen calls from card
companies alerting me to suspicious purchases, almost all of which were legitimate. I have replaced cards which were lost. Mary had a card stolen from a restaurant and
before we could stop it, there were $2,000 in charges, almost all of which were
gift cards. These charges were all forgiven. I left a phone in a hotel
and before I could stop activity there were several hundred dollars in calls,
mostly to Columbia. Again, all were removed from my bill.
But none of those occurrences were financially
catastrophic, and almost all of the major loss was absorbed by someone else.
Not to say there isn’t a cost. The companies that pay for those thefts pass
the cost on to us consumers as charges, premiums, or additions to their profit
margins on goods and services.
But isn’t that what we have come to accept for shoplifting? Few if any of us pause to breakout what portions
of the sales price include goods that were stolen, damaged in shipment or
returned in an unsalable state.

So, my conclusion is that data security will be less a
problem than it was. Public demand will
move even government security more to the field of public access, as we saw
with GPS satellites, most of which were owned by the government at that time.
The Libertarian streaks in my personality think that
is not all bad.
My next Post, which I hope will come in about a week,
will explain an insurance term that is seldom of concern: Co-related Exclusions
and how that fits into Dental Insurance.
I hope you will join me.
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