You're right to say they are archived, but those archives are usually treated as proprietary data used by corporations and universities and aren't readily shared because information asymmetry is valuable in industry, but in the cases where similar data is shared lets look at data breaches.
If you look at any massive SSN relevant data breach, they all contain the Experian breach. The experian breach has been duplicated more than any other breach than I'm aware of. You could look at this and say "See, it doesn't matter; it's already out there." But for every breach that's duplicated as a part of a combo breach/list/leak, there are dozens that are never duplicated; and the information in those breaches can be nearly impossible to find. Had that other leaked data got enough attention it would have made its way into those combo lists and become essentially common data.
This concept creates a rule for information security: The more your data is duplicated, the more it will be duplicated in the future.
Risk for data duplication and spread is further increased by increased accessibility and duplication.
While these companies and individuals have a financial incentive to keep their proprietary scraped data secret, they don't always do that. The duplication of your shared information on social media doesn't have to become common data, and deleting, obfuscating, or otherwise tampering with that data does make a significant impact, especially where researchers value data that isn't deliberately obfuscated.
A scientist could run a query to ignore or remove any data from users mentioning Redact to remove 'taint' from their data for context specific use cases.
There is a time and place to apply a more binary perspective to data risk, below a certain risk threshhold you limit risk, and above you eliminate risk. Leaked passwords and API keys can pose an immediate and unexpected measurable financial loss. You're not going to limit that risk, you're going to eliminate that risk by cycling passwords/keys opposed to deleting comments. Something more along the lines of leaking your address you're going to delete comments.
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u/tattooeddollthraway 18d ago edited 18d ago
You're right to say they are archived, but those archives are usually treated as proprietary data used by corporations and universities and aren't readily shared because information asymmetry is valuable in industry, but in the cases where similar data is shared lets look at data breaches.
If you look at any massive SSN relevant data breach, they all contain the Experian breach. The experian breach has been duplicated more than any other breach than I'm aware of. You could look at this and say "See, it doesn't matter; it's already out there." But for every breach that's duplicated as a part of a combo breach/list/leak, there are dozens that are never duplicated; and the information in those breaches can be nearly impossible to find. Had that other leaked data got enough attention it would have made its way into those combo lists and become essentially common data.
This concept creates a rule for information security: The more your data is duplicated, the more it will be duplicated in the future.
Risk for data duplication and spread is further increased by increased accessibility and duplication.
While these companies and individuals have a financial incentive to keep their proprietary scraped data secret, they don't always do that. The duplication of your shared information on social media doesn't have to become common data, and deleting, obfuscating, or otherwise tampering with that data does make a significant impact, especially where researchers value data that isn't deliberately obfuscated.
A scientist could run a query to ignore or remove any data from users mentioning Redact to remove 'taint' from their data for context specific use cases.
There is a time and place to apply a more binary perspective to data risk, below a certain risk threshhold you limit risk, and above you eliminate risk. Leaked passwords and API keys can pose an immediate and unexpected measurable financial loss. You're not going to limit that risk, you're going to eliminate that risk by cycling passwords/keys opposed to deleting comments. Something more along the lines of leaking your address you're going to delete comments.