Even better "please give us all the things which could be used by a foreign power to blackmail you, or apply pressure to relatives or other close contacts" and then poorly secure that database.
Those are the same guys who told us we must give them backdoor keys to every encryption algorithm, because nothing can go wrong with it and otherwise terrorists win.
That is awful, but it doesn't lessen the impact of someone who right now has access to your email and or other accounts. China having your DNA profile is not near as impactful as someone actively stealing your identity and potentially ruining your finances. Use 2fa everywhere, and if your email is in this list, you should change your password.
I feel like only in the US is credit monitoring something sold as an optional service.
I got a confirmation mail from System76, because apparently they feel the need to validate my credit card can’t be used without my approval, but my back does this by default…
Yes. US residents' ability to obtain credit (cards, cars, houses) is based on three shadowy for-profit organizations who each keep a secret score on each resident.
One's employment history is not a factor in the score at all (contrast this with Europe).
Furthermore, privacy in the USA is so bad, the leaking of one's personal details which criminals can use to fraudulently obtain credit and ruin said score and possibly also one's finances is a major concern. Hence, "credit monitoring" exists in order to catch this kind of criminal activity in the act, and I don't know, become completely exasperated with the amount of ass pain that dealing with this then causes.
> The data breach compromised highly sensitive 127-page Standard Form 86 (SF 86) (Questionnaire for National Security Positions).[8][18] SF-86 forms contain information about family members, college roommates, foreign contacts, and psychological information. Initially, OPM stated that family members' names were not compromised,[18] but the OPM subsequently confirmed that investigators had "a high degree of confidence that OPM systems containing information related to the background investigations of current, former, and prospective federal government employees, to include U.S. military personnel, and those for whom a federal background investigation was conducted, may have been exfiltrated."
