The hacks are getting out of hand.
I don't know if anyone else had noticed but it's becoming rampart. Most especially with the oversubscribed ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings). I have reached the point where I'm thinking twice about signing up for a whitelist.
Just imagine for a moment, how many hacks have you heard about in crypto and where do they occur? Top two... Exchanges and ICOs. In exchanges they steal coins, in ICOs they steal whitelists and sometimes replace the contract addresses with their own. The goal is always the same, to get coins.
I'm wondering if anyone has thought about what the implications might be when they are stealing people's information? When whitelist for an ICO we give a lot of information; name, addresses (email and physical, ether), ID documents, selfies...
Yes, for the moment they seem to be stealing just to scam people out of their crypto which is still plenty bad, yet no one is talking about all that personal information that they tap into when they steal the lists.
In the traditional space, when a hack happens and ID and payment information stolen, the banks go through great lengths to protect their customers from the harm that might come by replacing their cards immediately and so on.
With ICOs, the loss happens much faster. Most companies issuing ICOs don't even know they've been hacked till their supporters complain about being scammed.
I am not a security expert, I'm not even tech savvy enough to understand the full implications of information like that being stolen. But I do know that I don't want mine stolen.
Just my opinion, I think ICOs need to look more seriously at protecting their supporters data. If they use a third party to verify that data then they should ensure that those guys are capable to keeping that data secure. Or even better, they should use something like Civic to verify identities for their whitelists.
Anyone else out there thinking about this? Also, is anyone else wondering what they do with all that information once an ICO is over?
-pinkdust
my places
--Trade alt coins! Join Binance.com
---BUY BTC/ETH with visa/mastercard
----Get paid daily interest on your coin here
-----Get fiat without cashing out your crypto
image source: pixabay