120 million households exposed in massive database leak

[Tactical Peek]

Source: Forbes


120 million households exposed in massive database leak

Forbes

Thomas Fox-Brewster

Information on more than 120 million American households was sitting in a massive database found left exposed on the web earlier this month, Forbes has been told. It included an extraordinary range of personal details on residents, including addresses, ethnicity, interests and hobbies, income, right down to what kind of mortgage the house was under and how many children lived at the property. In total, there were 248 different data fields for each household, according to the researcher who uncovered the leak data this week.

While there were no names exposed, Chris Vickery, a cybersecurity researcher from UpGuard, told Forbes it was simple to determine who the data was linked to, either by looking at the details or by crosschecking with previous leaks. He found the data was sitting in an Amazon Web Services storage “bucket,” left open to anyone with an account, which are free to obtain.

As long as they knew the right URL to visit, an Amazon Web Services user could retrieve all the data, which was left online by marketing analytics company Alteryx. It was apparent that the firm had purchased the information from Experian, as part of a dataset called ConsumerView, on top of which Alteryx provides marketing and analytics services.

Vickery thinks the data was part of a product – the Alteryx Designer With Data – that sells for around $38,995 per license. In its own marketing for the Experian service, Alteryx notes that the database contains “consumer demographics, life event, direct response, property, and mortgage information for more than 235 million consumers.”



Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/120-million-american-households-exposed-in-massive-consumerview-database-leak/ar-BBH1F2V?ocid=spartanntp

[dalton99a]

1. Congress will take action to address this problem

[RKP5637]

2. Yep, congress will look into it to see if they can scrape off some money somehow for themselves. n/t

[Eyeball_Kid]

12. and then they'll give themselves a raise for a job well done.

[RKP5637]

14. And the idiot factor of America, which is quite large, will vote them all back in. It sucks!!! n/t

[Hekate]

3. Sure, when someone sorts the data by occupation and pulls up Congresscritters' data...

Any day now

[Clarity2]

4. When does it end??

Even if you don't ever go on the internet, your information is at risk of being exposed because companies are allowed to collect personal data on you. And it seems many these days don't offer you that "opt out" unless it's a personal bank that you deal with. That needs to change.

It's only going to get worse with this non existent consumer protection agency.

[getagrip_already]

5. Nahh, they were just giving it to RT analytics.....

to use during the next election cycle. Any data that goes to elect more gop critters is not going to be kept private.

[Clarity2]

6. Yep

my head always goes right to that conclusion too.

Election Commission voter data? Straight to Putin.

Equifax breach? Straight to Putin.

Now it's Experian.

I'd now like 2 or 3 step verification tied to my SS# please.

[Orrex]

7. I have previously proposed a solution that is 100% guaranteed to work

When a data breach occurs, the entity responsible for maintaining the security of that data is to be fined $100,000 per person affected.

Make them financially accountable for the amount of fuckery to which they expose innocent citizens, and then watch them solve these problems overnight.

[mentalslavery]

8. Researcher here...and I got some bad news....

if it is 120 million households...that means basically EVERYONE. The title of the post should be Everyone's personal data has been leaked....

[FakeNoose]

11. We're all screwed nine ways to Sunday

... nothing new there. All of us have had our privacy exposed numerous times, except for the few people who've never sent an email or applied for a loan or credit card.

Guaranteed - the Russian hackers already have this data.

[sandensea]

9. In other words, all of them.

Which, ironically, might be our best shot yet at getting to Cheeto's tax returns.

[FakeNoose]

10. Why would any company pay $38K for this data?

They can get it for free, it's right there on the Amazon cloud for anybody to take.

[Wednesdays]

13. As Bartcop would say, if a "mistake" becomes profitable to the ones causing it,

watch for the "mistake" to happen again and again and...

[BadgerKid]

16. A boon for credit report monitoring services.

Can't help think these "leaks" are partly intentional.

[RKP5637]

15. Too bad tRump's tax returns aren't exposed!!! n/t