The difference between breaking into a house and hacking into a machine is that a burglar can only break into so many houses and has a significant risk of getting caught. A hacker can get into an almost unlimited number of machines and is unlikely to risk any retaliation.

As a result you have the equivalent of dozens of people trying to pick the lock of your door every day, and the law can't do much to stop it. That requires you to pay f*ing attention to the quality of your lock.

It would be analogous to a security breach of a manufacturer's database of keycuts and corresponding locks, not outright refusing to lock your doors.

Right. That analogy it more correct, but it doesn't make it follow logically. It's like a someone having the keys and address for each key.

It does. Locking your house provides some security.

But it would no longer provide security if every person in the country had a copy of your key.

One of us missed the point.

It sounds like he's saying "don't worry about getting fucked by the Equifax breach; you were fucked already." Which certainly isn't reassuring, whether or not it's true.

It does follow. Not locking your house is not going to cause massive harm. If somebody really wants to get in, they will do itm

I guess you leave your front door open every morning before leaving for work?

I leave my house unlocked. If not, everyone around knows where the key is.

Of course, this isn't something I suggest you do. It's certainly not practical for most people. I mention it only to show that there are varied security needs. On this particular subject, my credit has been frozen since the OPM breech.

Yeah, that’s the problem when we start arguing with analogies. Things can get derailed easily. Mea culpa.

> I leave my house unlocked. If not, everyone around knows where the key is.

the day you get robbed, it will absolutely make a difference for whoever insure your house and its content.

If someone around here takes something, they needed it more than I did. I live way out in an unincorporated township. People aren't inclined to steal when they know I'd just help them out if they need me to.

It's pretty great to live here. The only crime in my area is growing weed and that's now legal.

We are talking about leaving door unlocked, not leaving the door open. I lock the door every morning out of habit but I'm pretty sure its unlikely that something happen if I don't.

I don't know what you are trying to argue about, but somebody got hold of personal details, SSN and credit card details of 140 million people.

The argument that it is ok, because anyway if somebody wanted it really hard they would find a way to get my personal details, is illogical.

Yes as the parent poster said, it may lead to the improvement of the system.

Yes and no. At a certain point, if people keep breaking into our houses, it's a good idea to think about the locks we use.

That's a different argument, than the one in the first line, to which I completely agree.