Cyber Security and the individual, does it really matter?

[anon(10092459)]

I just wonder if all this individual phone/data security really matters when most breaches happen against businesses or medical facilities or government agencies or whatever. I mean when I see stats like:

"Should we be worried about these attacks when many hackers target businesses and governments instead of individuals? The answer is a definitive yes: because these big organizations hold caches of individual information (which is useful for identity theft and other crimes), they make tempting targets for cyber criminals.

In 2014, 47% of American adults had their personal information stolen by hackers — primarily through data breaches at large companies. In 2013, 43% of companies had a data breach in which hackers got into their systems to steal information. Data breaches targeting consumer information are on the rise, increasing 62% from 2012 to 2013, with 594% more identities stolen. That added up to a staggering total of $18,000,000,000 in credit card fraud for the year." - CBS

I mean, all that we do to protect ourselves on an individual basis.. All the hype around security patches, two-step verification, etc. Does it really make any impact against the risk of loss?

 

[anon(238680)]

Using Chrome, I hit an incorrect ad link in twitter and in less than 5 minutes I had over 3000 emails signing me up for sites I had never heard of and two charges placed on a totally unrelated credit card account. I ended up deleting that email account, new CC, and no longer use Chrome or Twitter.

So yeah, its real.

 

[Torry Cox]

Using Chrome, I hit an incorrect ad link in twitter and in less than 5 minutes I had over 3000 emails signing me up for sites I had never heard of and two charges placed on a totally unrelated credit card account. I ended up deleting that email account, new CC, and no longer use Chrome or Twitter.

So yeah, its real.

I had all the same. I had to delete everything and create new accounts

 

[anon(10092459)]

I see what you guys are saying, but I'm more in the thought of that's not user error. When I read articles like this one regarding a recent hack at Chipotle stores, I gotta wonder how much individual security really protects any of us.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chipotle-cyber-idUSKBN18M2BY