Two weeks into the month, and I’ve already been notified by two different companies that they were hacked and my data was compromised—including my Social Security number. They apologized (oh, bless their hearts) and offered me one whole year of free credit monitoring.
One year, really? Maybe I’m missing something, but my Social Security number doesn’t magically expire like a carton of milk. I can’t just stroll into a government office and request a new one because some company treated cybersecurity like an optional hobby. They should be offering me lifetime credit monitoring, complete with foot massages.
Then again, to get that credit monitoring, I have to hand yet another company my full personal dossier. Wonderful. Until companies get serious about protecting our data, it’s only a matter of time before they gift-wrap it for some hacker browsing the dark web with a shopping cart.
Hasn’t changed yet
In one case, it was a secondary company providing services to my insurance company. The other was my telecom provider. Why on earth did they have my Social Security number? Because they “needed it” to run a credit search on me. Apparently, giving me a phone is equivalent to handing me the launch codes.
And once they decided I was trustworthy enough to own a rectangle of glass and silicon, why keep the number? My best guess: just in case they wanted to rat me out to the credit bureaus if I missed a bill. That’s not just lazy; that’s bad practice. Once the credit companies verify me, all these folks need is the credit companies’ record number. Not my entire identity laminated and shoved in a drawer for safekeeping.
Sure, there are several different credit monitoring companies, so maybe they’d need to store multiple numbers. Seems like a small price to pay to avoid storing the keys to my life in plaintext. But no—company after company confidently assumes they’ll never be hacked. And when they are, who pays the price? Spoiler: not them.
I have no idea how much they’re paying for the honor of giving me a single year of credit monitoring. It would cost me about $90 a year. Bring them 400,000 newly panicked customers, people likely to extend or upgrade, and suddenly that “free year” starts looking suspiciously like a marketing promo. But hey, thanks for the illusion of compensation.
Until the penalties for losing our data are more than a corporate version of “now don’t do that again,” companies have no reason to change. My Social Security number doesn’t change after a year. If you insist on keeping it, locked in your digital junk drawer, the penalties for losing it should match the damage done. Store my data in the clear and practically hang a sign saying “Hackers Welcome”? Then you owe me a lifetime of protection, minimum.
Maybe then they’d think twice before hoarding my information like dragons sitting on piles of unsecured spreadsheets.
Which brings me to one of my other pet peeves: companies that demand I create an account before they’ll do business with me. Verizon couldn’t even spell my name correctly. When I tried to fix it, they basically shrugged and said, “Impossible.” That level of inflexibility is why Verizon and I divorced. Well, that and the endless, mysterious fees that blossomed on my bill like mold. But the point remains: whenever I see my name mangled in that very specific Verizon way, I know exactly who’s been sharing my data.
I’m not endorsing them, but they provide one way to reclaim your data!
And that’s… useful. Does this company really need my name, address, and phone number? If not, why hand them accurate info? Why make it easier for data brokers to create a crystal-clear profile of me? Tiny changes, barely noticeable to me, can make it easy to track who’s leaking what. Plus, it pollutes the data pool those collection sites rely on. A win-win.
Why do I care? Let’s talk about those delightful data collection sites. Google yourself sometime, you’ll find half a dozen sites confidently announcing they have your full, “publicly available” background. A lot of it is wrong, hilariously wrong, but they don’t care. Bots did the collecting. Humans don’t even look at it. And the goal? To make it easier for strangers to act on your information—your birthplace, age, spouse, address. Everything needed to spoof your identity or bombard you with ads for things you never asked for.
They’re not paying me. They’re not helping me. So why in the world should I feed them accurate data? Unless a company has a legitimate need for my details, I give them whatever random factoid I feel like that day.
Yes, my real information is out there. I can’t stop that train. But I can run my own personal disinformation campaign. And I do.
Did you know I was the mayor of Whitewall, Nebraska? I live in the big yellow house at the top of the hill. Lovely view.
And of course, today’s song from Songer… Watch Your Data, Darling!
© 2025, Byron Seastrunk. All rights reserved.
