> but everybody I know here in Eastern Europe are indifferent.

Fellow Eastern European here, I remember I was made fun of by my former colleagues back in 2005-2006 when I was saying that the United States requiring bio data in order to get a traveling visa (I think fingerprints became mandatory for US visa applicants back around that time) was very not ok, I received the same responses that you mention.

Nowadays that the bio thing has started reaching and directly affecting people more to the West the subject is fortunately debated on websites like this one and also in some parts of the Western mainstream media, but back in EE the subject is still ignored or at best is made fun of. I remember attending a street march/protest against bio ID cards/passports a couple of years ago, and the majority of participants were religious people that believed things like "666 the number of the Devil" and all that + a couple of tech people like myself which are still seen as paranoid by our friends and work colleagues. Unfortunately the civil society from this part of the world is totally mute on this type of subjects.

To be fair to all sides, it's really hard to care about societal problems that might morph into personally dangerous leaks -- especially when many people struggle to make ends meet and have food on the table. I get that part.

But most people in EE are also way too cynical and demeaning by default and yeah, that's a real problem when issues like these arise. Nobody takes them seriously until something monumental happens.

I'd say some Americans. Social Security Numbers and Credit Cards kind of get people going, but basically anything else elicits a "meh." Shocking and sad that the Equifax hack and bungling didn't get more people going than it did.

Because most people really aren't affected. I've experienced no negative consequences of the Equifax hack, nor several other major leaks that I was included in (OMB to name one). I'm not happy about the situation, but it's also not affected me directly, yet.

I think my hope, with the massive amount of SSN data that Equifax has, was that we'd see the SSN system being looked at to convert to something almost like a private/public key type of system where if someone obtains someone's SSN, another one can be generated pretty painlessly with the old revoked and can be linked back to the owner.

I know the primary issue is that the SSN wasn't intended for the use case it is used in, but we're at the point now that it is so probably best to protect it in a manner that protects the user/owner.