1.2 billion people’s personal and social information exposed in a massive data leak in an unsecured dark web server; largest data leak in history

The Internet has turned into a wild-wild west. Our privacy is virtually gone and no one is immuned from the onslaught of attack on social media. Our personal information is no longer safe. In some cases, social networking sites like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, which open up their APIs to developers, make it easier for bad actors to get access to your personal information online. The question is, what’s government doing to keep our personal data save online?

In October, dark web researchers Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia found a trove of data sitting exposed and easily accessible on an unsecured server—about 1.2 billion records in all—containing profiles of hundreds of millions of people that include phone numbers and social media profiles. The data comprises  4 terabytes of personal information—about 1.2 billion records in all.

A total count of unique people across all data sets reached more than 1.2 billion people, making this one of the largest data leaks from a single source organization in history. The leaked data contained names, email addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIN and Facebook profile information. What makes this data leak unique is that it contains data sets that appear to originate from 2 different data enrichment companies.

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