Ten largest data breaches since 2000

Posted by David Pescovitz, March 14, 2008 8:49 PM | permalink

Nathan Yau of FlowingData created posted a graphic showing the 10 largest data breaches in the last 8 years. "Notice the higher frequency as we get closer to the present?" writes Nathan. Follow the link to see the whole thing. Link (Thanks, Mike Love!)

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Discussion

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#1 posted by Moon , March 14, 2008 9:20 PM

That TJX thing had me worried, because I used a credit card at Marshall's AND TJ Maxx during that period.

YIKES!

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#2 posted by rjmccall , March 14, 2008 10:51 PM

The largest-yet observations of this phenomenon that naturally gets larger over time are clustered in the recent past! Shock and horror!

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#3 posted by 4649 , March 14, 2008 11:19 PM

Put millions of eggs in a single basket and you're guaranteed a mess.

Yet the concentration of power and information seem to be all the rage. Is that not a compelling rebuttal of 'the wisdom of crowds'?

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#4 posted by Ugly Canuck , March 15, 2008 4:06 AM

Muckraking journo Wayne Madsen claims that many of these data losses are actually spooks (CIA/NSA) populating their illegal TIA databases.

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#5 posted by Songe , March 15, 2008 6:55 AM

Breaches that we know of at least. I have a feeling that there is a war going on for this sort of information that all parties are interested in hiding.

If anything, I feel somewhat reassured with the frequency of the publicized breaches, as it indicates greater willingness for the breached party to own up and warn people about what happened.

Man I shouldn't be leaving comments, I just got back from Austin festivities 3 hours ago.

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#6 posted by tim , March 15, 2008 9:04 AM

Don't forget the slight cock-up by the british civil service recently; 25 million personal records lost -
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lost-in-the-post-the-personal-details-of-25-million-people-758867.html

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#7 posted by Matt Eric , March 16, 2008 4:13 AM

I think my favorite part of that graphic is the fact that the numbers given add up to 273.9 million, or roughly 91 percent of the population of the United States.

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#8 posted by Drastic , March 16, 2008 12:12 PM

quote- "Notice the higher frequency as we get closer to the present?"

Not really, your nice graphic doesn't seem to show any increase in frequency. (Looks like 2 cases/year)

Maybe I'm reading it wrong...

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#9 posted by Drastic , March 16, 2008 12:18 PM

quote- "Notice the higher frequency as we get closer to the present?"

Ah, my mistake...

I've seen 'the whole thing'(meaning the graphical timeline) now...

Not very scary, really...(could be a slight increase in frequency, or seen as twice as many cases in recent years)...just depends on how you look at it.