this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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It sounds like a bad breach, and I'm not arguing against that. I just want to point out my doubts that there were ever 2.9 billion Americans since the founding of the nation, let alone since social security numbers became a thing. Maybe if I bothered to read the article, it would make more sense.
Okay, but I'm not sure how revelant that is. The article doesn't say only Americans were affected, it says the exact opposite.
Like I said, I didn't read the article, but only Americans would have social security numbers.
Social security numbers being involved in a breach does not mean that the breach only affects Americans. Some records might not have an equivalent ID number associated with them at all, and some records could have similar ID numbers from other countries. They also list current address as part of the data leaked but the fact many people don't have a current address didn't seem to cause you any confusion. The original source lists "information about relatives", if that was in this title would you have assumed only people with living relatives were included?
"I didn't read the article" is a poor excuse when you're commenting on the believability of the article. What happened here is you saw an article, immediately assumed it was about the US, realised that doesn't make any sense, then dismissed the article without even bothering to check because the title doesn't fit the US exclusively. It's crazy to me that you wouldn't even consider the fact it's not an exclusively US-based leak.
I mentioned the not reading the article so people would not waste their time citing facts from the article that may explain the headline that suggested billions social security numbers were leaked. I made no assumptions about missing addresses, as the headline didn't mention anything about missing addresses. I even mentioned that the event the article discussed was probably pretty bad -- definitely not a negative against the article's believability. I'm only guilty of judging a book by its cover, and in an existence of limited time, nobody has time to do any more than that except for limited exceptions. I did not choose to make this article an exception. The headline was mathematically deceptive, and my comment was about that. Nothing more.
If you see an article highlighting a breach of social security numbers and don't assume it's about the U.S., that's crazy to me.