HayesConnor Solicitors provided an interesting article that appears on LegalFutures in the UK. In this piece, they interview psychologist Professor Hugh C. H. Koch about the psychological impact of privacy breaches. Here’s a snippet:
What are the typical psychological effects on victims of data breaches?
Data breach victims typically experience high levels of anxiety, both specific to the data breach itself and generalised to other aspects including dealing with correspondence, telephone and digital communications and the payment of services.
Victims can also experience social anxiety including difficulties in dealing with friends and neighbours, tradesmen and shopping transactions following a data breach.
The above seems to be talking about large data breaches where the individual is not specifically being targeted but is just caught up in a breach. But what are the psychological effects on victims of privacy breaches where they are being specifically targeted and harassed by people revealing their personal and sensitive information? That is a whole other level of psychological impact.