So my information is online, and it’s a tremendous convenience. I can buy an eBook from Amazon with a single click. Accounts that bill on a recurring basis store my payment information so I don’t have to login each month and manually pay my bills. It’s all very convenient, but what’s this convenience costing me?
Here’s a story of how Mat Honan, senior writer for Wired online magazine, was intentionally and epically hacked! A painful process which destroyed many of his online accounts, prevented access to email and other online resources, and wiped data from his personal computer.
I’m a huge fan of the convenience of the Cloud, but there can be severe consequences of being cavalier about your data. Here’s an excerpt from Mat’s story:
…what happened to me exposes vital security flaws in several customer service systems, most notably Apple’s and Amazon’s. Apple tech support gave the hackers access to my iCloud account. Amazon tech support gave them the ability to see a piece of information — a partial credit card number — that Apple used to release information. In short, the very four digits that Amazon considers unimportant enough to display in the clear on the web are precisely the same ones that Apple considers secure enough to perform identity verification. The disconnect exposes flaws in data management policies endemic to the entire technology industry, and points to a looming nightmare as we enter the era of cloud computing and connected devices.
Read the entire article here.
