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A data broker is an individual or company that specializes in collecting personal data or data about people, mostly from public records but sometimes sourced privately, and selling or licensing such information to third parties for a variety of uses. Sources, usually Internet-based since the 1990s, may include census and electoral roll records, social networking sites, court reports and purchase histories. The information from data brokers may be used in background checks used by employers and housing.
A news leak is the unsanctioned release of confidential information to news media. It can also be the premature publication of information by a news outlet, of information that it has agreed not to release before a specified time, in violation of a news embargo.
The Internet has a long history of turbulent relations, major maliciously designed disruptions, and other conflicts. This is a list of known and documented Internet, Usenet, virtual community and World Wide Web related conflicts, and of conflicts that touch on both offline and online worlds with possibly wider reaching implications.
Aadhaar (Hindi: आधार, lit. 'base, foundation') is a twelve-digit unique identity number that can be obtained voluntarily by all residents of India, based on their biometrics and demographic data. The data is collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a statutory authority established in January 2016 by the Government of India, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, following the provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, benefits and services) Act, 2016.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Inc. (ICIJ), is an independent global network of 280 investigative journalists and over 140 media organizations spanning more than 100 countries. It is based in Washington, D.C., with personnel in Australia, France, Spain, Hungary, Serbia, Belgium and Ireland.
The Office of Personnel Management data breach was a 2015 data breach targeting Standard Form 86 (SF-86) U.S. government security clearance records retained by the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM). One of the largest breaches of government data in U.S. history, the attack was carried out by an advanced persistent threat based in China, widely believed to be the Jiangsu State Security Department, a subsidiary of the Government of China's Ministry of State Security spy agency.
Have I Been Pwned? is a website that allows Internet users to check whether their personal data has been compromised by data breaches. The service collects and analyzes hundreds of database dumps and pastes containing information about billions of leaked accounts, and allows users to search for their own information by entering their username or email address. Users can also sign up to be notified if their email address appears in future dumps. The site has been widely touted as a valuable resource for Internet users wishing to protect their own security and privacy. Have I Been Pwned? was created by security expert Troy Hunt on 4 December 2013.
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents published beginning April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. These documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, the former Panamanian offshore law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and compiled with similar leaks into a searchable database.
On March 27, 2016, hackers under the banner "Anonymous Philippines" hacked into the website of the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) and defaced it. The hackers left a message calling for tighter security measures on the vote counting machines (VCM) to be used during the 2016 Philippine general election on May 9. Within the day a separate group of hackers, LulzSec Pilipinas posted an online link to what it claims to be the entire database of COMELEC and updated the post to include three mirror link to the index of the database's downloadable files. The leaked files by LulzSec Pilipinas amounts to 340 gigabytes.
In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected without their consent by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, predominantly to be used for political advertising.
Between May and July 2017, American credit bureau Equifax was breached. Private records of 147.9 million Americans along with 15.2 million British citizens and about 19,000 Canadian citizens were compromised in the breach, making it one of the largest cybercrimes related to identity theft. Equifax discovered the breach end of July, but did not disclose it to the public until September 2017. In a settlement with the United States Federal Trade Commission, Equifax offered affected users settlement funds and free credit monitoring.
Distributed Denial of Secrets, abbreviated DDoSecrets, is a nonprofit whistleblower site founded in 2018 for news leaks. The site is a frequent source for other news outlets and has worked on investigations including Cyprus Confidential with other media organizations. In December 2023, the organization said it had published over 100 million files from 59 countries.
Hancock is a C-based programming language, first developed by researchers at AT&T Labs in 1998, to analyze data streams. The language was intended by its creators to improve the efficiency and scale of data mining. Hancock works by creating profiles of individuals, utilizing data to provide behavioral and social network information.
Data breach incidences in India were the second highest globally in 2018, according to a report by digital security firm Gemalto. With over 690 million internet subscribers and growing, India has increasingly seen a rise in data breaches both in the private and public sector. This is a list of some of the biggest data breaches in the country.
ShinyHunters is a black-hat criminal hacker group that is believed to have formed in 2020 and is said to have been involved in numerous data breaches. The stolen information is often sold on the dark web.
Emma Best is an American investigative reporter and whistleblower. They gained national attention for their work with WikiLeaks and activist Julian Assange. Best is known for prolific filing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on behalf of MuckRock and co-founding the whistleblower site Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets).
The Epik data breach occurred in September and October 2021, targeting the American domain registrar and web hosting company Epik. The breach exposed a wide range of information including personal information of customers, domain history and purchase records, credit card information, internal company emails, and records from the company's WHOIS privacy service. More than 15 million unique email addresses were exposed, belonging to customers and to non-customers whose information had been scraped. The attackers responsible for the breach identified themselves as members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous. The attackers released an initial 180 gigabyte dataset on September 13, 2021, though the data appeared to have been exfiltrated in late February of the same year. A second release, this time containing bootable disk images, was made on September 29. A third release on October 4 reportedly contained more bootable disk images and documents belonging to the Texas Republican Party, a customer of Epik's.
Vincenzo "Vinny" Troia is an American cybersecurity researcher who is known for reporting on and identifying members of The Dark Overlord hacker group as well as hacker pompompurin, who was the owner-operator of the website BreachForums and was involved in the 2021 FBI email hacking.
Verifications.io is a defunct email-focused technology firm whose primary practice was to validate email addresses for email marketing platforms. The company's platform allowed for email marketing firms to submit lists to the company, which would verify the lists for valid email addresses.
References
- 1 2 3 "Marketing Firm Leaked Database With 340 Million Records". WIRED. June 27, 2018.
- 1 2 "Exactis said to have exposed 340 million records in massive leak". 28 June 2018.
- 1 2 Paul, Kari (June 29, 2018). "What is Exactis—and how could it have leaked the data of nearly every American?". MarketWatch.
- ↑ "Marketing Firm Leaked Database With 340 Million Records". WIRED. Retrieved 2018-10-09.
- ↑ "A New Data Leak Reportedly Exposed 230 Million Americans' Personal Information".
- ↑ Al-Heeti, Abrar (June 28, 2018). "Exactis said to have exposed 340 million records in massive leak". CNET. Retrieved January 22, 2019.
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