After many years of marriage and two kids, you're going through a messy divorce. A relative of your soon-to-be-ex spouse works at LG or an info aggregator that subscribes to LG. The relative gives file names to the spouse as ammo. Doesn't even matter if they were your files. You're going to be hurt.
Suppose you say "the files can't hurt you if there's no proof". Sure they can. A babysitter's business can be killed by the mere rumor of abuse to some unspecified children. Interviews with jurors have confirmed little effect from the judge telling them to ignore a comment.
This isn't hypothetical. I know a divorced man who was initially given custody of the child, and later lost all custody to the ex-wife. Only years later, after the child was an adult, did he find out that the ex-wife's sister worked for Child Protective Services and silently worked the system against him, including creating false accusations.
I can hear you say "That's illegal. He can fight that." One, only if you know about it. Two, only if you can prove otherwise. Remember, it's not criminal court where you are assumed innocent. Three, only if you can prove the source of the false information. Four, in this case even if the sister confirmed writing an an accusation, the writing was sufficiently vague enough to condemn, and at the same time provide plausible deniability. For example, accusation: "Father regularly receives pornographic material in the mail and leaves it open and scattered in the living room. Child has full access when father is present and when father is frequently absent. Child engaged with the material." Truth: dad subscribed to Sports Illustrated. Dad took a daily 2 hour nap when he put toddler down for nap. Sometimes toddler woke up first. Dad paid for that mistake twice when toddler tore up his Sports Illustrated.
Here's another example of the damage of not owning your own data. My son was denied a job at 18 because he failed a credit check. In this case the would be hirer did him a favor by telling him the reason. Come to find out an illegal immigrant in El Paso Texas stole my son's social security number when he was 8. The social security office said they don't prosecute SSN theft, and they don't help clear your name with government records or the credit companies. He was just a teenager, a kid; I didn't believe the government wouldn't help clear up an obvious crime. I looked it up on the web. I still have a hard time believing it even with the facts in front of me. To add insult to injury, the credit companies said they wouldn't change the records because they believed the El Paso man to be the rightful owner of the SSN. Wait, that's not all. The social security office my son a hard time when applied for a new number.
Sure, I got a bit tangential from the LG topic, but not horribly so. The main point remains that bad data can hurt you, the bad data doesn't have to be accurate or even yours, you might not be aware of the bad data or the negative impact on your life, and although the system isn't out to get you, an individual with access to your data in the system can cause you hurt.
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