[closeparen]

This has nothing to do with the "data broker system." Reading between the lines it was more of a "shadow IT" issue where employees were using some presumably third-party GIS service for a legitimate business purpose but without a proper authentication & authorization setup.

[A4ET8a8uTh0_v2]

Assuming your tea leaf reading is correct, that particular third party would not even exist in its current form without 'data broker ecosystem'. It is, genuinely, the original sin.

[closeparen]

A website where you can upload POIs to a shareable map seems like one of those things that's so obvious and so useful it exists almost under any economic arrangement of the advertising industry.

I get that data brokers and big tech are a much sexier topic, but this breach - like so many of the most pressing threats to our privacy - are mundane shortages of competence and giving-a-shit in the IT activities of boring old organizations.

[A4ET8a8uTh0_v2]

Heh. The shareable map is operated by someone and that someone has information that other people crowdsourced for them for free is even more valuable. If you want a more relatable example, I would like to point to defuct effort ( karma or something.. I can't find the specifics now ), where people were invited to crowdsource all sorts of info on other people. It only got shut down, because it was too on the nose. On the other hand, items like the shareable map like the one you mention is more easily defensible...

<< I get that data brokers and big tech are a much sexier topic, but this breach - like so many of the most pressing threats to our privacy - are mundane shortages of competence and giving-a-shit in the IT activities of boring old organizations.

I posit that both could be true at the same time.

[fc417fc802]

I think OSM would exist regardless of data brokers. Free services ingesting that data and letting a user annotate it would also exist. People create and operate all sorts of little projects for fun.