Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database With 340 Million Records

DooKey

[H]F Junkie
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Marketing firm Exactis has leaked the personal information of close to 340M individuals in the US. That's pretty much almost every US citizen. Email addresses, addresses, phone numbers as well as family information like number of children, genders and much more are in this leak. This is even bigger than the Equifax leak, however, this leak doesn't include credit card numbers or social security numbers. Regardless, this has got to stop and the fact that family details are included in this leak makes it a bit more dangerous in my opinion. Time for someone to go to jail.

While the precise number of individuals included in the data isn't clear—and the leak doesn't seem to contain credit card information or Social Security numbers—it does go into minute detail for each individual listed, including phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses, and other highly personal characteristics for every name. The categories range from interests and habits to the number, age, and gender of the person's children.
 
I look forward to such idiotic companies being bankrupted by fines thanks to GDPR...

If you cant keep personal info safe, you shouldn't store it...
 
I am anti litigious by nature, but this company needs to be sued into oblivion. So sick of no one ever facing real consequences for anything.
 
Until these guys lose their shirts in law suits, it going to continue to happen. The insane thing about this is all of the data collected on people down to the ages and gender of their children. That's jacked up, this just doesn't hurt us it hurts the next generation without them even being able to do anything about it.
 
Here's the problem. Lets say they get INSANE fines.. 40k a person for 340 million people... lets see..
$13,600,000,000,000.00

You know what they will do. Fight it in court until they get the sum total of the damages. then declare bankrupcy, restructure, and relaunch under a different name same people doing the same job.

Now if you REALLY want it to sting they need to trace back the information to it's sources and do it that way. Fine all of he sources for the pieces of information leaked to this unsafe company. THAT would have companies around the world doing everything they could to limit liability.
 
FTFA
credit card transaction data sold by banks

isnt that awesome. so the "banks" sell your transaction histories to those willing to pay to data mine it.


and after reading the article and it detailing the sheer array of info it contains on individuals..WOW
 
wonder if they'll be a data dump, so i can see what people have collected on me
 
wonder if they'll be a data dump, so i can see what people have collected on me

Right you want the leaked data on everyone JUST to check on what's out there for yourself? Suuuuure.

Oh hey... is that (movie starlet's) phone number and address. Well I guess it's time to meet my future wife! ;)
 
Stuff like this makes it easier for scammers to send you fake stuff. I get all kinds in my email. I ignore all of it. 99% of the time its fake imo
 
This is why it needs to be illegal to maintain databases of personal information.

The ONLY way to prevent leaks and theft of this data is to make sure it doesn't exist in the first place. Personal data has value, and any large enough collection of it is going to make itself a target, and NOTHING is unhackable.
 
This is why it needs to be illegal to maintain databases of personal information.

The ONLY way to prevent leaks and theft of this data is to make sure it doesn't exist in the first place. Personal data has value, and any large enough collection of it is going to make itself a target, and NOTHING is unhackable.


You've now broken pretty much every app and the internet..... And how do we enforce this, regulations? What is the threshold for 'large enough collection' of data? Yea that is not a solution for this issue....

The real way to fix it has been brought up already. Security requirements for personal data, similar to HIPAA and PCI, with actually fucking enforced penalties for breaches. Look at what happened with the last few major breaches like target, aetna, equifax etc. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. In fact the 'fuck consumers - pro corporate-overlord administration had the CFPB drop any investigation into the equifax breach. Their one fucking job.... Now all the other companies see there are no penalties for breaches, so why the fuck would they spend money on IT/security? Cut costs there, and *when* a breach happens they just go oops and throw some low level intern under the bus and then business as usual.
 
You've now broken pretty much every app and the internet..... And how do we enforce this, regulations? What is the threshold for 'large enough collection' of data? Yea that is not a solution for this issue....

The real way to fix it has been brought up already. Security requirements for personal data, similar to HIPAA and PCI, with actually fucking enforced penalties for breaches. Look at what happened with the last few major breaches like target, aetna, equifax etc. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. In fact the 'fuck consumers - pro corporate-overlord administration had the CFPB drop any investigation into the equifax breach. Their one fucking job.... Now all the other companies see there are no penalties for breaches, so why the fuck would they spend money on IT/security? Cut costs there, and *when* a breach happens they just go oops and throw some low level intern under the bus and then business as usual.


I don't care if it means a complete and total end to the entirety of the business model that makes the social media industry possible.

Big data needs to end. "The cloud" needs to end. IOT needs to end.
 
I don't care if it means a complete and total end to the entirety of the business model that makes the social media industry possible.

Big data needs to end. "The cloud" needs to end. IOT needs to end.

Guess it's a good thing it's not up to you. And since none of that is going to happen, what's plan B?

Also, you are severely underestimating the effect of your proposal. Personal data storage isn't just limited to social media platforms, and is pretty much required in any major industry. So we are back to needing regulations with enforceable consequences if there is a breach.
 
We have people in prison for crimes such as owning a pocket full of satan's lettuce. Yet the political and public consciousness hasn't been raised enough to appreciate the severity of massive corporate data leaks and their real world ramifications.

Can anyone see the obvious deterrent here ?
 
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