Data security is a hot topic in privacy circles. We have already accepted that corporations and other big institutions collect data about us. But do they keep it safe? Not always. Brad Edelman, a privacy researcher at the Harvard Business School shows a glaring vulnerability in Sears’ data protection scheme:

Sears offers no security whatsoever to prevent a ManageMyHome user from retrieving another person’s purchase history by entering that person’s name, phone number, and address.

Which is not OK. They have since fixed it, but the incident does highlight issues regarding the ways that companies do protect the large amounts of data that they collect from you. Granted, Sears has been scrimping on IT, but what is to say that this is not the case elsewhere? Last June, Privacy International rated Google as bottom-ranked in terms of data protection and privacy, which myself and others found surprising. And some found outrageous.

So is this really a big deal?
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