WHO DO YOU TRUST?

Most of us were taught to trust our parents from birth, and this kind of rubbed off in later years to other people and things like friends, business, the government, etc. And then along came the Bush/Cheney administration with their blatant lies and deceptions that suddenly pointed out the fact that this had been going on for years, but only more subdued in the past. And, without the enthusiasm and frankness of the blogging world. This is all leading up to the fact that, based on a recent article on ZD Net.com, and a study by Javelin Strategy & Research, 77% of the public says it will stop shopping at merchants that breach personal data. This came in the wake of TJ Maxx’s announcement that 45.7 million accounts were compromised over a period of two years. On MSNBC in a piece by Mark Jewell, someone had “free rein” over TJX companies’ (TJ Maxx parent) computers for at least 17 months. You can rest assured they weren’t in there just hacking for pleasure. It is hard to fathom, considering all the media attention to ID theft in the last two years, how a company could allow this to happen. But it clearly illustrates once again how business is simply not willing to take the necessary steps to protect consumers’ private information. This one is so big—actually the largest to date we are aware of—the secret service is involved, and TJX hired IBM and General Dynamics to investigate the breach. However, we know the fickle behavior of the American public. This is what you say today, but will you actually do it tomorrow? It’s decision time on who controls your sensitive data, and you are the only one who can make the right decision.