There was recently a security breach somewhere in the government which exposed the private information of every man, woman, and child that holds a social security number in the United States. This puts over 300 million people at risk of fraud as this information can be used to apply for credit of all sorts.

The press coverage on this has been small thus far, with a little blurb here and there well down the list of links in my news feed. But it should be one of the first items that everyone sees.

I am astonished that this information was stored anywhere that a group could illegally gain access to all of it. It feels like the sort of thing that should only be available locally at the facility used to house the computers that store it all. The kind of data that was compromised should never be facing the public at all because this was inevitable.

The information must be worth billions of dollars on the dark web, and I’m sure whichever group is responsible for the breach has already made a mint.