OPM got hacked and all I got was this stupid e-mail

My data was hacked, and I'm mad as hell.

As anyone who reads Ars no doubt knows by now, the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has been hacked hard—losing data on some 21.5 million people. The agency's director just resigned over the situation. But exactly why does the hack matter? What was exposed, and how sensitive was that information?

OPM is sort of (but not quite) like the government's human resources department. Most federal workers probably know OPM as the agency that tells them whether or not they've got a snow day. But OPM also handles background checks for sensitive positions, and this motherlode of data is now in the hands of whichever adversary broke in and stole it.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments