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(2023 edition)
In the hours following a massive data leak where data from almost all Turkish citizens was exposed, users of the only industry where this kind of mass security failure routinely happens concluded there was no way to prevent such breaches from taking place. “The data breach involved 85 million people, and that happens to be also the population of Türkiye, but sometimes these things happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them”, said Oysel Vek, echoing sentiments expressed by millions of individuals who post their names, religion, sexuality and personal information into centralized computer networks in order to send cat memes to one another. “And besides,” he continued, “we’re mostly just talking about all personal data, including that of relatives, bank details, title deed information, and addresses of every resident in Türkiye. There’s much more to life than these things.”
The incident follows a long string of similar incidents. Some are due to sophisticated hacking, such as the breach exposing information on every driver’s license holder in Louisiana, including names, addresses, social security numbers, and even handicap placard information, birthdates, heights and eye colors. Others are due to mere incompetence of a subcontractor, as the 2017 Equifax leak of nearly all US households or in the NeoPets data breach of 69 million users, including names, email addresses, zip codes, genders and birth dates. “You’d think every person in the world would have their name, address and personal information out there by now,” said Lark Luckerberg, “pretty soon we will reach herd immunity to doxxing so maybe it doesn’t matter so much?”
“It’s a shame, but what can we do?” asks Melon Usk, quizically raising his eyebrow. “It’s not like we have some kind of alternative open source platform that lets each person and organization control their own data. ” When asked about WordPress, which powers 4 in 10 websites in the world, he exclaimed, “Are you kidding? I want videoconferencing, chats, events, payments, profiles, and I want it all in real time with slick notifications. If I am going to check my phone 10 times a day, and share the latest controversy with my friends it’s definitely not going to be on that old software. That’s the modern internet industry. But they better beware, if WhatsApp wants to sell my data, I’ll show them!” At press time, millions of people around the world were seen switching from WhatsApp to Telegram and Signal, in an effort to escape putting all their data, conversations, money and votes in one place.
This article is an homage to The Onion’s article about mass shootings that happen with some regularity in the USA, which is reposted every so often with only the dates and names changed. Here is last year’s article.