Data breach is the thing to come. While Europeans are concerned about US-police and their insatisfiable hunger for SWIFT-data, the US themselves are worrily looking at the TJMaxx data breach (basically a sloppy shop owner).
It's quite interesting to note the difference. The news in Europe is all about the government that may ue personal data beyond what is necesarry. While the news in the US focuses on the financial effects and fraud as a result of the data breach. It may be just the consequence of the nature of the data breach, but would it not also reflect something of a cultural difference?
In any case, data breach may be the real hot thing of the future. It used to be straightforward card skimming. But as technology develops, the question will become how we can shield payment information and prevent misuse in later transactions in a world of continued diversification of technologies (your account number/name or an ID linked to that will be present on all sorts of devices).
