Unauthorized access to company systems has exposed personal data again and again, and the apology notices that follow are wearing people down. Some recipients, no longer sure which messages are genuine, leave them unopened.
Since July, disclosures of leaks caused by unauthorized access targeting major companies and government bodies have recurred in Japan.
Hirokazu Takahashi, a 53-year-old doctor in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, has received several emails headed "an apology regarding a personal information leak." Two of the services he has signed up for match: the ticket sales service GETTIIS and m3.com, a site for medical professionals.
Messages of unknown origin arrive alongside the legitimate ones. One carried the subject line "A request to confirm customer information for the mileage club."
Spam mail that could once be spotted by its typeface is now hard to tell apart from the real thing. Even messages about services he uses leave him uneasy. "When I think it might be a scam, I'm too scared to open it," he said. "There is also judgment fatigue."
A researcher's view
Fujio Toriumi, a professor at the University of Tokyo graduate school who studies computational social science, said leaks have spread so far that it is fair to say almost no one in Japan has been spared.
Society may now have to operate on the premise that personal information has already leaked, he said. The importance of protecting it remains.