Agreed.

That said, any company collecting PII (or any type of data a customer believes is protected really) as part of their business has a duty of protecting that information.

Unfortunately, you can't trust joe sixpack to make safe and sound decisions as to whether they should sign up and give their contact/personal info to your new random app, let alone evaluate the level of your opsec practices.

Saying "we take the privacy of our customers very seriously" months after a breach and going back to business as usual is not enough, and I think this is true for both startups and big corporations.

One of the earlier comments said "Stop fucking ruining people's lives.", I think it pretty much sums it up even if it's probably a bit extreme. The first step is to stop considering security as an afterthought when you write any piece of code.

This is bullshit. If your organisation can't protect their customers data, it shouldn't exist. Enough of this "I need special treatment because I'm just two dropouts working from a Starbucks'.

Your view doesn't account for the fact that in computer security, offense overwhelmingly beats defense. Target. Sony. Home Depot. Nordstrom. Those are the ones you hear about, but what's scary are the number of company and government breaches that aren't made public. The cost of a zero-day is in the low to mid six figures.[1] If you are a juicy enough target, you will get hacked.

Obviously, this doesn't mean one should disregard security concerns. It's important to engage in good practices, to cultivate a combination of paranoia and attention to detail, to scrutinize suspicious behavior. But even if you do all of these things, modern computer systems have tons of surface area outside of your control. These days, it's unrealistic to demand perfect security from anyone, let alone small businesses.

Instead of being so uncompromising, I think it's better to ask businesses to explain their security policies and practices. Are administrators required to use multi-factor auth? Are backups encrypted, and if so, how? How are passwords hashed? Is data encrypted in transmission, and if so, how? Are server logs shipped to prevent tampering? Answering these questions (and others like them) can give security-conscious customers an idea of the business's expertise, and allow people to use products (or not) accordingly.

1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/03/23/shoppin...

No, with all due respect, you're bullshit. Hacking my app is illegal. You're saying I shouldn't write a web app in the first place, just because I'm some guy and barely know the framework I'm using. Well, maybe you should go live in Somalia if you don't like a code of laws. I can't do security right. I can do a web app poorly, or nothing at all. You're saying, give the world nothing. I'm saying, sod off. I've had enough of perfectionists like you keeping people from making stuff.

Yeah, and fuck food safety regulations, because I'm just some schmuck who wants to operate a restaurant but can't be bothered to learn about how to do it properly so everybody who doesn't want to be poisoned shouldn't be such a bitch who'd prefer a steak without a side of e coli, right? And let's abolish drivers licenses too while we're at at, because anyone who wants to have a bare minimum of driving skill from other road users should just go live in Somalia, right?

Well actually, if you think it's OK to expose your user's data because you don't know what you're doing but think you deserve a piece of the startup gold rush pie anyway, it's you who should go live in Somalia and see what becomes of a 'society' of people who just do something with no oversight, skill of knowledge. If the choice is between 'doing it poorly' and 'nothing at all', then you should do 'nothing at all' because your actions affect other people. Basically you say 'screw my users, I can't be bothered to learn things properly but I want money anyway!'. Well, fuck you, you are the cause of all these problems, and you deserve everything that comes to you.

Using this train of thought, you probably don't even have a lock in your door - burglary is illegal!

where did I say they shouldn't use accounts or passwords?

That's not perfectionism. His comment is an emotional simplification of a complex problem without any consideration of side effects. This is just like being "tough on crime" rhetoric of some politicians.

And how about your users? I bet they don't mind their private information stolen, because they support your airbnb for dogs?

Will you give your little speech about laws and how it's illegal to hack your website and people shouldn't have done it?