What is the point of this kind of reply? To try to diminish the impression of the severity? To distract? To just make reading the contents slightly worse for everyone?
It's so clearly not the point of the db in the article that there is no chance anyone reads this and thinks it is the same thing the article is referencing. Is this just really low quality trolling?
That 65% figure in the press release has an interesting origin. It seemed oddly specific to me, so I had a look.
In the actual report main text, it says that the risk is between 35% and 65%, but does not explain the calculation, if any, that results in those numbers.
It's not until one reaches Appendix A that one finds that this really means that it has been assigned a value of 3 on a scale of 1 to 5, meaning "medium risk", and the value 3 is arbitrarily assigned that percentage range, originating with the U.S.A. FDA's Office of Information Security, where "low risk" (2) is similarly 10% to 35% and "very low risk" (1) is less than 10%.
7 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 24.7 ms ] threadseq -w 0 999999999 | sed -E 's/^([0-9]{3})([0-9]{2})([0-9]{4})$/\1 \2 \3/' | awk '{ area=$1+0; group=$2; serial=$3 if (area==0 || area==666 || area>=900) next if (group=="00" || serial=="0000") next printf "%03d-%02s-%04s\n", area, group, serial }'
It's so clearly not the point of the db in the article that there is no chance anyone reads this and thinks it is the same thing the article is referencing. Is this just really low quality trolling?
> In addition to SSNs, the database reportedly includes Americans’ place and date of birth, work permit status, and parents’ names
This is quite a bit more information than just a number.
In the actual report main text, it says that the risk is between 35% and 65%, but does not explain the calculation, if any, that results in those numbers.
It's not until one reaches Appendix A that one finds that this really means that it has been assigned a value of 3 on a scale of 1 to 5, meaning "medium risk", and the value 3 is arbitrarily assigned that percentage range, originating with the U.S.A. FDA's Office of Information Security, where "low risk" (2) is similarly 10% to 35% and "very low risk" (1) is less than 10%.