Over at Kaspersky, Cory Doctorow has an interesting article that argues that far from being the new oil, data is actually the new toxic waste. He begins by noting that any data you collect will, sooner or later, leak and that when it does criminals will combine it with other leaked data to undo any anonymization that you’ve applied. That data is, he says, “pluripotent, immortal – and impossible to contain.”
So far, companies have been immunized from liability by the difficulty of showing any specific harm to a specific individual from a given leak but that is changing. Just as with physical toxic waste, although a plaintive may not be able to point to a particular harm to a given individual, the fact that a company is responsible for the release of data will be enough to hold them liable.
Doctorow says that the only wise action is to delete the data you’ve accumulated and not gather more except for specific purposes for a short amount of time. The most astounding thing is that the research shows that gathering data doesn’t pay. If there was a large gain to be realized, perhaps companies could write off their potential liability, but it turns out that the data isn’t really valuable. It’s just a liability waiting to subject the companies that collect it to substantial penalties. The people exclaiming that data is the new oil are, in fact, selling snake oil and you accept their arguments at your peril.
Sadly, this message will probably go unheeded until a few companies are driven out of business by ignoring it. Don’t let your company be one of them. Get rid of that toxic waste while you can.