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According to a new report, a company little known in Florida could have exposed the personal data of almost all US adults.
Wired reported Wednesday that Exactis, a marketing and data aggregation company based in Palm Coast, Fla., Had exposed a database containing nearly 2 terabytes of data, containing nearly $ 340 million worth of data. Individual recordings, on a public server. This included 230 million consumers and 110 million businesses.
"It seems like it's a database with just about every American citizen," said Vinny Troia, a security researcher, who discovered the violation earlier this month. "I do not know where the data comes from, but it's one of the most comprehensive collections I have ever seen," he said.
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Although the database does not appear to include credit card or social security numbers, it includes phone numbers, e-mail and postal addresses as well as more than 400 personal characteristics, such as a person who smokes or cat, their religion and a multitude of personal interests. Even if no financial information was included, the extent of personal data could be used to profile individuals or help crooks steal identities.
Troia told Wired that he was easily able to access the database on the Internet, and in theory, many other people could have it too. He said he warned Exactis and the FBI of the vulnerability, and that the data is no longer publicly available.
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On its website, Exactis reported maintaining 3.5 billion consumer, commercial and digital records, including demographic, geographic, topographic, lifestyle, interest, GIC, automobile and behavioral data. . millions of American households.
There are approximately 325 million residents in the United States, with approximately 244 million adults and 126 million households, according to the United States Census Bureau.
Exactis did not respond immediately when asked to confirm the violation.
If confirmed, the data leak would be one of the most important in the story, and far more important than the Equifax data breach last year that revealed the information about 148 million consumers.
A violation of 2016's AdultFriendFinder exposed data from more than 412 million accounts, while Yahoo's hacking 2013 exposed personal data of about 3 billion accounts.
Although technically not a violation, Facebook Inc.
FB -1.59%
said in March that most of its 2 billion users had their personal data "poorly shared" without their permission, including about 87 million profiles that were erased by Cambridge Analytica.
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