[Dataloss] Incident Highlight - Total affected... who's counting?

[lyger]

http://datalossdb.org

2008-08-23 by Lyger

http://datalossdb.org/incidents/1127

There has been some discussion about the recent loss of a "memory stick" 
with the personal details of inmates in Great Britain. As the story above 
shows, it appears that about 84,000 prisoners may have been affected by 
this breach... or is that 94,000? Or... is that 130,000? Who knows... as 
bad as the British government apparently is about keeping anyone's (even 
prisoners) personal information safe, the media is apparently equally as 
bad about doing that "numbers thing".

For now, DataLossDB has this particular breach listed as 94,000 total 
records affected until more conclusive (coherent?) data has been obtained, 
but at least one question should be asked: does the total number of people 
affected in ANY data breach really matter? It seems that breaches with a 
large number of people and/or records affected get more media attention, 
especially when a lot of zeros and commas are in the headline, but is that 
really any indication of the magnitude of the real problem at hand?

[...]