When Your Local Newspaper Helps Identity Thieves By Printing All Your Private Info
from the whoops dept
Forget worrying about whether various companies or government agencies are leaking your data to identity thieves, now you need to wonder if you're local newspaper is going to help them out. Apparently, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Maine ran a photo of a lottery winner which clearly showed the lottery paperwork, including the winner's name, address, telephone number, date of birth and Social Security number. In other words, everything you need for a bit of identity theft -- and who better to target than a recent lottery winner? So far, the only thing the newspaper has done is promised to hire someone to review the person's credit reports. Either way, it seems pretty bad that no one caught on to the fact that they were about to print all this information in the newspaper.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Wow
WINNER!
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cache
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re cache:
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do you guys know...
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Newspapers
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And I doubt there's any law suit. Not everything is actionable. Usually, you have to show damages.
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Freedom of Press
Freedom of press does not mean inflicting harm on civilians. It means reporting the atrocities and wrong doings of the government. Freedom of press means that the government cannot coerce, threaten, intimidate, or punish someone for printing stories about the government's actions or about alternative political philosophies. It does not mean that you can victimize innocent people who have nothing to do with government to make a quick buck.
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??
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